Chapter 2, Session 2: The road goes on

General Summary

'I was saving you from the dragon' 'But Auriel is a dragonborn and was saving you' 'No, the other dragon...' 'What other dragon?' 'Oh... guess you kind of had to be there'

• Sigholdt and Peregrine discuss his drug-fueled trip during their travel.

The party continued their travelling towards Bloomwilt alongside their new companion Sigholdt. The group moved in tense silence for the day and found themselves a rocky outcropping to rest in, knowing that it represented safety from the sand wyrm that attacked them the previous day. 
Esmerae was on first watch that night and she saw that, in the distance, the sand was shifting and the head and neck of a figure emerged. Esmerae decided to approach and check it out to find that a man claiming to be named 'Priam' was chained beneath the sand and was begging to be set free. The vampire fetched Peregrine who offered to help the man by lassoing him and pulling from a distance only for the man to show that the chains covered his entire body and to complain aggressively that Peregrine was being callous and not doing the easier thing and undoing the chains. Eventually, with the lasso not going to plan, the rest of the party were gathered and Sigholdt went to pull the man's chains only to be caught in the trap of a Desert Angler which saw the opportunity to attack and combat started!
The party dealt with the desert angler with relative ease, Peregrine utilised a bane spell on the creature whilst the rest of the party assaulted it and, before long, the creature was brought down and killed without anyone in the party sustaining injuries (thanks roll20 rng). During the fight, Peregrine insulted the creature in the language of The Nocta Mori and struck it with a guiding bolt whilst Auriel attempted to remove the creature's eyes only to learn it was, in fact, blind. Eventually, with the creature focused on Sigholdt, Peregrine managed to cast a powerful guiding bolt that tore through the creatures body and killed it. The party spared a moment to mourn the life of the creature's lure whilst Hermione mourned her ineptitude in combat...
As the party were moving back, Sigholdt confronted Peregrine, telling her that he felt she was unnecessarily cruel to the creature and shouldn't have insulted it. Peregrine immediately became defensive and claimed that she 'didn't like liars' and felt the creature deserved the insults... Sigholdt expressed that, to him, the party had done the equivalent of stepping into it's home and habitat where they are it's prey and he felt it strange that Peregrine would be offended to be treated as such. The two dropped it and, instead, Peregrine quizzed Sigholdt on how he knew the language of Nightmares. Sigholdt explained that his group The Waking were taught those languages at a young age... he then admitted that he wasn't really a part of the Waking but was instead one of their guards but had left and wasn't sure about going back yet. 
Peregrine then started to interrogate Sigholdt on what the waking were and where she could find them... Sigholdt wasn't particularly forthcoming to her but did express that he only knew his sister and mother were part of the order but that he wasn't ready to go back to the order himself.
With that, the party started their third day of travel; with no more encounters since the desert angler to worry about. Their next day went over without issue and so they enjoyed a day of easy travel... barring Hermione's frostiness towards Sigholdt when they revealed themselves to be a capable driver.
The next day, the fourth day of travel, the party continued their speedy pace and knew, by the end of the day they'd be a mere one or two days out of Bloomwilt where they wished to rest. During their travels, the party found an isolated wooden table in the centre of the desert underneath the shade of the tree. The table had a basket with seven healing potions inside and there was a small sign on the table that said 'These items cost, honesty is the best policy'. 
The party discussed the meaning of this before agreeing it was expected that they would purchase these potions... the party realised how lacking they were in funds now and eventually figured that they would try using a bag of Peregrine's drugs to trade for the potions... but not before Sigholdt tried them first and, on a terrible constitution saving throw, found that the drugs they were given catches an individual between dreams and reality and so Sigholdt began to dream of a crushing sensation, a dragon attack and struggled to differentiate that and the reality in which they were living. However, the group managed to get the drugs on the table only for the furniture item to cast Gust of Wind and launch the drugs across the desert. 
The party then realised that the table wanted to see honesty from them and so, through a variety of honest statements, they managed to procure the items and left the table behind and completed another day of travel, making their way, at speed, towards Bloomwilt.

Report Date

25 Jul 2023