The Dimming of the Moons
General Summary
Embert explained that his tribe wore black robes to hopefully prevent the dimming of the Moons, that he thought was being caused by the Sun. Strange belief, but I’ve heard stranger. Oriana Salali convinced him that this would not have any effect upon the Sun or the Moons. After thinking about his logic, he accepted the reasoning and would not force the tribe wear black any longer. Many of the tribe were happy to hear this and thanked us later. We had not noticed that the moons were growing darker over time, but he said this would be shown to us tonight after a feast.
After the meeting I went to talk to Osloran and learned that he left the tribe shortly after I had wondered into the planes and began my path to become a Druid. He had missed me and wanted to find what had happened when I didn’t return. He eventually joined with a group of merchant sailors and was sailing toward Kalaman Bay when the ship was attacked by Minotaur’s. The ship was sunk but he managed to make it to shore and eventually wandered to Lor-Tai where he met Ka’ren, his wife, and had a son they named Joen.
Later that evening went to the feast and had a glorious time, all except for Bing. He was wondering outside the main group of partiers and noticed a tent rope that he thought was tied with the wrong knot. In trying to correct the knot he accidently caused one of the tents to collapse. After the tribe corrected resetting the rope, Bing ensured that this time they used the correct knot.
At the end of the feast Embert drew everyone’s attention upward towards the moons to witness the dimming. We then saw what had missed our awareness prior to this point about the moons. They did in fact, dim significantly at one point, both the White and Red. Afterwards, they brightened back up, but not to the extent that they were before the dimming. The Moons were indeed dimming more and more over the stretch of time!
After the dimming was over Embert said that the next morning L’vrez, his son, was going to lead a small group of villagers to feed Moonscale, the local bronze dragon that looks over and protects the tribe. He had not been seen in about a month’s time and the offerings that had been left for him had not been consumed. Embert asked if we could go and investigate the cave to see if we could notice anything about Moonscales absence. This seemed to fit in with our quest of seeing why the dragons were disappearing so we agreed.
Early the next morning we started off on foot, with a goat as an offering. Because the terrain of where Moonscales dwelled was too rocky for the horses and bison, we left them in the village. Oriana Salali woke that morning with a migraine and decided that it would be best for her to stay in the village and recover.
The trek was not long and eventually led to a cave opening. The villagers replaced the goat that had been left for Moonscales with the fresh one and explained that only one of us could go into the cave and report back what they had seen to the elder. So, a single party member had to go in alone. They left the choice to me as to who to send in. Knowing that this could be dangerous I chose Mirra. From what I had seen in the past few days that we had been together; she could handle herself in the most dangerous situations. This concerned me greatly since it is not the best idea for anyone to separate from the group and go into a potentially dangerous situation. I hoped that I had not just sent her to her own death.
While she was inside the rest of us were attacked by those damn flying monkeys again! It seems like there were initially only 4 of them. As we were attacked, I yelled to the group to go to the entrance of the cave to force the monkeys to come down to the level to where we could attack them with melee weapons instead of ranged weapons. This was to no avail since as soon as I moved into the cave the rest of the group was besieged by them. In addition to this, there were additional monkeys who were shoving trees and boulders down upon me trying to block the entrance to the cave.
Ra Di Gas was the first to be attacked and took significant damage and in defense, turned himself invisible in an attempt to save his life. That left only Bing and Ti'ock as potential targets for the flying beasts, so I decided to exit the cave and engage in the battle outside the cave.
Bing had two of the beasts on him so that was my primary focus. I engaged one of the beasts that Bing was attacking and hopefully eliminate one of them so it would turn into a battle of 2 to 1 in our favor. One of the beasts that had been attacking Ra Di Gas was still focused on finding and attacking him, I hoped that he would survive the onslaught of the beast since he was invisible to the rest of us. Ti’ock was again doing what he was trained to do; move in, attack and move out; move in, attack and move out, it was a wonder to see him in action. Even the locals joined in the battle and were able to strike one of the monkeys.
I also saw Bing bring the full fury of battle when he was using his sword of frost and combining it with his Smite Evil. I was able to finish off one of the beasts along with Ti’ock, but Bing was able to slay two of the beasts with what I would call Divine guidance. He beheaded one and slashed clean through another. I had often wondered if he had exaggerated the number of draconians that he had killed, but the more I see him in action, the more believable the count is real.
After the immediate battle had been won, I searched for Ra Di Gas, since he was not responding to calls for him. I was able to find his body, not quite dead, but struggling to survive, and place a Goodberry into his mouth to revive him. In the meantime, Ti’ock had shot an arrow that he had purchased called a Fountainhead arrow. This arrow upon hitting a target, creates an acid burst several times burning all those within a certain radius, therefore hurting or killing several others.
Bing had climbed the trees and boulders trying to dislodge them so the entrance would not be blocked, while I called upon a Dire bat to attack the monkeys over the entrance to the cave and assist Ti’ock’s attack. Bing also tried to climb up to the monkey’s position from the rubble that had piled up in front to the cave but was unable to reach the top of the caves entrance and engage them (probably due to his stature as a gnome). After all the monkeys had been killed, we started to clear the entrance to the cave.
After several minutes we were able to clear most of what was piled in front of the entrance. Mirra emerged and told us what had happened inside the cave. A short distance into the cave she discovered that there was a pit that was too large for her to jump. She had tied a rope to a large boulder and lowered herself into the pit only to be attacked by three vicious rats. She had merely smiled and sliced through them with her greatsword with ease. The climb up the other side of the pit was not as simple. Eventually, after a couple of attempts, she was able to make it up the other side. There was then a corridor that she had walked down that opened up to a large cavern.
This was indeed where Moonscales resided but was thankfully not currently occupying. On the opposite side there was another opening on the side of a cliff that overlooked the sea. Mirra did a cursory look through the cavern and did not find anything amiss that would lead her to believe that anything nefarious had happened to Moonscales. She then returned to find us removing the rubble from the entrance to the cave.
When we were finishing up clearing out the entrance, I had expressed some of my questions and opinions of what happened to Bing during his resurrection. Did he meet Kiri-Jolith? What did he remember? What did he think of his future in the Legion of Steel?
I expressed that it was probably doubtful that the Legion would welcome back a Gnome into their ranks, and if they did, it certainly would not be in a leadership position. Maybe he could restart his life in a completely new direction and not be solely focused on killing draconians. There was more to life than just killing the enemy. Maybe Kiri-Jolith had given him a second chance to do things differently. Along with a longer lifespan to enjoy life a little this time around. Maybe act more Gnome’ish and enjoy life a little more.
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