Rain makes people make stupid decisions
General Summary
It has been raining for a month straight. I don’t think I’ll ever be dry again. I’m huddled with much of the rest of the town in the Lost Spur getting a last drink. Like most everyone else in this little town, I won’t have money to buy a drink soon if this rain doesn’t let up.
That is of course when Raul Iban a whole long list of other names walked into the Lost Spur with his servant behind him. I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but when a well-dressed man walks into a less than stellar bar with his servant, it gains everyone’s attention.
“I have need of a few brave souls to travel up the mountain with my servant here,” he declared looking over the crowd of retired soldiers and washed-out farmers. “I’ve lost touch with the miners and they’d just found some very promising nodes that I want back in operation as soon as possible.”
I didn’t have anything better to do, and the state of my coin pouch said this really was the best decision I could make, so I volunteered.
“And why should I pick you?” he drawled looking me up and down.
“I was with Cap’n Avery in the war, and I’m a good hand in a fight if you need help,” I answered fingering my well-worn scimitar at my waist. His eyes followed the movement of my hand and nodded.
“My servant, Agni, will see you tomorrow morning at first light then.” I nodded and headed over to the local church to bed down for the night. They are always willing to let a few people sleep in the empty monks’ quarters.
The next morning I show up at the agreed meeting point and am surprised at the motley crew assembled there. I see Devon, the down on his luck merchant, who is always trying to make a fast dollar. There’s Cap’n, he swears he is a cleric of the Creator, but he also swears like a sailor. My next two new teammates are girls, which is unusual in this line of work. Milli seems a bit rough around the edges and she tends to whistle or hum a tune when she’s not talking with everyone. Oh, and she seems to really like wolves. Lili, who I worked with a few months ago to solve a problem with poison in the water supply is also there. She is quite a unique person.
not a man used to hiking up mountains
As we climb the mountains I notice Devon seems to really struggle to get up the hill, almost as if he hasn’t really done much in the way of walking recently. Looking at his stomach, I’d say that’s an accurate statement. If I hear him suggest stopping for a break one more time I’m going to scream.
That night as we rest around the fire Cap’n entertains us with great tales of his missing boat and his amazing ice sword.
Now, Agni would swear up and down that he did not do this, but I swear every time Cap’n mentions his ice sword, the man shivers, like ice is a terrible thing.
That and he has the most amazing sword I have ever seen, he drew it to start our campfire tonight. Agni pulled the thing out of its sheath and it burst into flames and he stuck it into the midst of the firewood and suddenly we had a great blazing inferno.
I was fortunate enough to pull the final watch with Milli. In another bit of fortunate news, it finally stopped raining. Unfortunately, I suspect that means it is about to start snowing because it turned much colder.
As Milli and I huddled in our cloaks and sat with the fire warming our backs, a crowd of goblins and bugbears burst into our clearing.
“Wake up!” I shouted as the creatures set on us. Thankfully the creatures, though many in number, were quite weak, and after some desperate moments, we were able to dispatch them.
One of the goblins had a shimmering cloak that Lili puts on. There’s something mesmerizing about the cloak.
Squid + dog = squog
That day as we hiked up the mountain, Agni turned to Milli and said, “Given the strange behavior of the animals last night, and the attack by goblins, it would probably be wise for you to scout ahead.” She has been hired on as our scout, apparently, she was raised by wolves. A feat I find quite amusing.
We’d been marching on for a while, mostly in silence, though it was occasionally marred by the complaining of Devon about his feet hurting. Why he thought shoes fit for wearing in town would work up here in the mountains I don’t know. Maybe he hasn’t traveled much?
Either way, Milli came back to us and motioned for us to gather around, “There’s an overturned wagon up ahead. The animals are dead, and the people are all there beheaded. It looks like they were hit with spears.”
“This could give some clue why the miners have not sent anything down, maybe it was one of their wagons,” Agni said. “Lead the way.” We hiked another 10 minutes and discovered the wagons. This was obviously not from the mine. It looks like a farm wagon with everything they owned piled onto it.
“Agni,” Devon called out, “I see toys for kids here, but no kids. Could they have been taken?”
Milli looked around the ground and noticed footprints of a small group heading away from the wagon. “Maybe they’ll know what happened to the kids.” We followed her as she tracked the group and stopped as we saw a large number of campfires.
“What are you doing here?” asked a voice from nearby. We turn and see a short roughly shaped man holding a flint spear.
“We are looking for some missing children,” Devon answered.
rough sketch of the hill folk
“We are stopping two feet from killing us. Hill Folk were taken, and we gather and hurt two feet to keep them from hurting us more,” the man said as he looked at our weapons.
“Well we are not here to hurt you,” Devon said holding up his empty hands, “We just want the missing kids, and we will leave you alone.”
“We have two small two feet, they cry a lot, can you make them stop crying?”
“Yes, if you give them to us, we can make them stop crying by taking them away,” Devon answered.
“Okay, and you will stop taking Hill Folk people?” the man asked.
“Yes, since we did not take any of your people, I can safely say we won’t take any more of them.
The man nodded and brought us two young girls, the oldest was maybe eight. Either way, their eyes were open wide and scared, and I knew this was going to be a rough trip.
“Hi there!” Devon said getting down to their level, “My name is Devon, and these are my friends. We are going to take you with us to somewhere safe. Do you want to do that?”
The girls with eyes opened wide nodded, and ran over clinging to Devon. In no time he had them giggling and had found out their names were Erin and Betty, and their family was heading out of the mountains because some weird creatures had attacked their farms, and it wasn’t safe there anymore.
The whole time we head away from the hill folk I keep glancing over my shoulder quite sure I’m going to see someone following us. I never see anyone, but it still feels odd.
We again take watches, and this time it doesn’t take long for something to break the quiet of the night. We are all awakened to Lili screaming as a strange creature watches her and snuffles its way into her tent.
Hearing the screams of alarm I immediately shift into wolf form and come out to help my friend, only to see the most hideous strange doglike creature with tentacles growing out of its face.
Cap’n struggles to help Lili but accidentally skewers her with his harpoon. Do people carry harpoons on land?
I guess Cap’n really does think he’s still at sea.
The creature tries over and over to bite us, but we are able to hold the thing off and dispatch the foul creature.
Thankfully the rest of the night is not so exciting, and after a few days hike, we have reached the mine.
Only to see an empty valley of abandoned buildings. We poke our heads in every building we pass but see no sign of anyone. Eventually, we find the mine office, and luckily there’s a ledger there, from Excerpt from Dr. Franz Alystein's journal .
Just as I finish reading the journal I hear shouts from Cap’n and Milli, “We found a building that’s boarded up and it sounds like someone is in it.”
My head shot up when I heard that, “Don’t open it up!” I run with the letter, and we all agree it’s best not to open up the building. We carefully open up a small hole in one of the boarded up windows and see something that was once human, but now has gray skin and looks strangely misshapen.
“I can try to communicate with them,” Lili says. She does something, I don’t really understand how it works, but after staring at them for a minute, her shoulders slump, “It’s like I’m trying to communicate with a wrong channel.”
Just as she says that the creatures attempt to break out, and Agni says, “They are beyond redemption, we should burn the building down.”
As the fire starts the creatures break out of the building trying to kill us, and we put them down.
“Let’s finish looking through the buildings, maybe there is more information to be found here before we go down there,” Agni said. We finish looking through the various buildings, and in the process find:
• 22 dragon dust daggers
• Several bags of ore
• A dragon dust pouch
• 1 gem, which Lili kept
We sleep together with the girls we find in a bunk house. The next morning we tell the girls to lock themselves in the bunk house and not let in anyone but us. They nod staring at us with their big eyes. I don’t think I’ve seen them without their eyes opened wide in shock or fear.
The mines are warmer than I expected and more humid. We travel down several levels and finally get to the fourth letter we read about in the note. And just as we read in the journal, that’s where the cavern is.
But cavern doesn’t adequately describe this room. It is quite tall, and there are several columns scattered about the room. The columns each quite clearly have carvings on them, but as we move closer to inspect them two of the strange squid dogs, squogs jump out and attack us.
In the desperate fight between the two squogs, Agni is bit by one of them. At first, I thought the wound was minor, but as the fight winds down I notice Agni laying on the ground. We all rush over to him only to hear him charge us, “Bring an egg back to my master. He will want to see them.”
And then he died.
His body turning to ash as we watch.
I’m not sure what we are supposed to do now.
Report Date
21 Dec 2021
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