There is no servicing going on around here
General Summary
You would think rescuing the world from sure destruction would get us gratitude.
Instead, Abbott McDougal proceeded to lecture us about the importance of keeping a secret, and why we absolutely cannot tell anyone about the secret vault in the middle of the cathedral. There might have even been some threats to send the Ministry of Questioners after us.
He also does not know much about the strange girl in the middle of the secret room. All he knew was she was given into the care of the humans living here, and the Lady in the grove is the caretaker. If the trust is broken it will be a resumption of war.
Oh, and he has no clue what unholy creature it was the squog melded with. Sigh, no answers there.
Cap’n is thinking about going to the Holy Isles to find more information and has hired an alchemist to try and make more Broken Chain potions. We’ll see how that goes.
TWO WEEKS LATER
The weather has finally broken, and Cap’n, Milli, and I have gotten together for a drink at the Lost Spur for a drink to celebrate. It’s nice to see the sun occasionally. I just wish it was more often. Lightning flashed and a trio of strangers entered the tavern. Okay, I lied. It just seems like lightning flashes all the time when something dramatic happens. In reality, they just walked into the tavern, looked around, and got ridiculously excited when they saw the Cap’n. “The Memphit has called you to attend her at our village in repayment for your debt Cap’n. We need your great skills and heroism to save us. Three people have gone missing in the last two weeks. We need the great hero who escaped a whale, met and defeated a Kraken, and a great shark.” We head off with them on their rather small boat and cross the lake. As we travel I listen in amazement to Cap’n retelling of the great squog battle. It’s an interesting rendition. Finally, the women turned to us. “It must be a great honor to serve under such a magnificent captain. I am sure you have learned quite a lot from him.” “No, no, let’s clear things up. We serve with, not under him,” I answered quickly. “Yes, there is no servicing going on here,” and then Milli seemed to realize the phrasing was not quite what she intended and she colored slightly, but no one else seems to of caught the implications of her statement. “There’s the town,” the girl, whose name I eventually learned was Marie, called out. We head up to the general store where Memphit sits on the porch in a rocking chair. She looks down at us and after checking in on the Cap’n, assuring herself that neither Milli, nor I is married to or interested in marrying the Cap’n, she proceeds to tell us what’s going on. “Two weeks ago, Anna, a twelve-year-old girl, disappeared from her bed while the other kids were still in bed, and her parents were out. Then a few days later Kristov, the blacksmith’s apprentice was walking out to use the privy and never returned. And after that Henry was out fishing in his boat, and he just disappeared. His boat was found the next morning all tied up, but he was gone.” “How old were Kristov and Henry?” I asked. “Kristov was about 16 I reckon, and Henry was a crotchety old man, probably about 40, no family to speak of,” Memphit said rubbing her chin. “We were looking into it, but then somethin’ ‘appened over at the Orbans’ place. You know, them rich folk. Old Orban heard a noise and went to investigate while the boats were headin’ out for the day. The boats came back that night and they found Ol’ Orban tied up to a chair, and he’d been worked over sumthin fierce.” “We’ll look into this Memphit,” Cap’n said. Then Cap’n pulled out the monster map and dropped the stones. One turns blue but it’s far out on the edge of the map. I’ve never seen a bluestone before.THE BLACKSMITH SHOP
We talked to the blacksmith, Long John, and learned Kristov was a steady lad, about half done with his apprenticeship. We head out to check out the area he was last seen heading towards, and as I’m exploring the area I notice someone up in the trees. I change to a squirrel and sneak closer to her. I follow the girl and notice she is not acting the way I’d expect a young girl to act. Maybe she’s like Milli and was raised by wild animals. Meanwhile, Milli starts howling at the moon, you know in broad daylight. As I get closer to the girl I notice she’s got red eyes, which is rather unnerving. She’s looking over at the general store and Memphit, and as she makes a move to leave, I turn back into my human form and grab her. But as I grab her I feel this great pain, and fall out of the tree. She manages to wriggle away, and no matter how I try, I cannot find the freaky child again. Looking at the monster map she seems to be heading towards the blue dot. We head back to Memphit and ask if anyone strange has been through here recently and she comments, “There was only the usual prospectors coming through. We get people like that every now and then sure they’ll strike it rich in the mountains here or something. They were askin’ ‘bout Ol’ Whistler and what was goin’ on wi’ it.” “What’s Old Whistler?” Milli asked. “Oh, it’s tha’ grassy hill over thar with pretensions of bein’ a moun’ain. It’s east o’ here, almost in the woods. The wind there seems to whistle, so we’s call it Ol’ Whistle.” “Well, if we could get a boat to head over to the Orbans, that’d be a great help,” Cap’n requested. “I’ll have Marie take you over to ‘em, for all the good it’ll do ya,” Memphit answered, “She’ll take ya first thing tomorra morning.” “Much obliged,” and we holed up in a back room of the general store for the night because a town like Davenscross does not have an inn to speak of. Of course, Cap’n was given a hammock, because Cap’n.THE ORBANS HOUSE
The Orbans encampment is obviously more well off than the others in the area. There’s several small, but solid houses built of wood and stone. When we arrive, it’s obvious the men are preparing to head out on the lake for the day, but they grunt and gesture us over to an older lady minding a passel of kids. “Talk ta Aunt Tilly, she’ll give you answers.” ‘Aunt Tilly’ started the children cleaning and sat down out of earshot of the little ones. “Oh that was a sad business it was. We got home and he was near death. All he would repeat was some old sing-song thing. Where waters warm and cold do meet Lies a road both smooth and straight That no one sees There among the verdant mural Below the Rock both round and dark Lies a weight that burdens souls “I can’t really say much more, but it seemed more like his injuries were done to cause pain than you would expect.” We thank her for her time and head back to Memphit. She thinks for a bit and then a memory sparks, “Oh that old thing. It’s taught from elder to elder. It’s something we’ve said as long as we’ve been here. I always thought it was some great secret. From time to time you get some young fool who decides to solve the riddle, but they al’ays disappear into the forest. It’s not a wise thing to look into.” She glances at our faces as she rocks. “But, I can see you’re determined to try. Your fool’s errand. I always figured it starts over where the hot springs are over by the pond right before it hits the lake. The waters in the pond are hot, but the river feeding into it is quite cold.” We thank her and head over to the pond she told us about. THE ROAD BOTH SMOOTH AND STRAIGHT We get there, and the river heading out of the pond is amazingly straight, like unnaturally so. Cap’n tries to swim down to the bottom of the river, but there’s enough silt and mud here he can’t tell if the bottom is smooth. We decide to follow the river upstream and travel up it about five miles or so. There’s a slight uphill incline, but nothing too strenuous to hike. After a bit, we are into the forest itself, and all of us become a bit wary. Finally, we hit a clearing with a waterfall. The walls of the cliff face are covered in vines. Cap’n climbs up the cliff face and finds a hole in the wall. Above the wall is a white triangle. He crawls in and notices there’s some sort of poison spike set into the floor of the cave he’s crawling through. “Thar be poison on these spikes, and I do be needin’ your help up here,” Cap’n yelled down. Not one to climb on my own if I can help it, I shift into a cat shape and squeeze past the Cap’n. Also, a cat doesn’t have to worry about carrying a torch into the darkness of the cave. I slowly pass the Cap’n and continue down his small cave tunnel. As I walk I notice the floor is getting steeper down and there are bits of metal sticking up out of the floor here and there. From the quick smell I get of it, it’s got more of that poison on it. Nasty thing that. At the end of the tunnel, it suddenly slides down rapidly into a pit with tons of those spikes, only bigger. It was only the sure-footedness of my cat form that kept me from sliding down into that death trap. I climb back up, hit Cap’n on the nose to show him not to go down that tunnel. He tried some silly thing about meowing twice for no or something, but I just ride on Milli’s shoulder over to another cave she’s found. This one has a red hexagon shape on it. I climb down that one for a bit and find a similar death trap down it. At this point we are convinced there must be another cave that is not a death trap. After three hours of searching, we find the third cave behind the vines, just five feet from Milli’s cave. This one has a black circle above the opening. This cave goes in about twelve feet, and then it opens up. Inside there are eight big locked chests made of that same green metal locked. It takes a bit of work, but we are able to get the chest out of the cave and down the cliffside, and we convince Devan to get up from his sickbed to pick the lock. Inside we find two sets of armor, some bracers, greaves, breastplate, you know the types of things you’d lock away. Oh wait, I wouldn’t lock those away. There’s also these strange spikey disks in there that look to be part of the armor. I turn away for a moment contemplating how we’ll get the rest of the chests down, and when I turn back Cap’n is busy putting on the armor. “It’s got all sorts of strange buckles and thing on it. Can you help me tighten this on?” he asks. Sigh, this does not seem like a good idea, but it’s not like I’m going to convince Cap’n otherwise. After he’s gotten the armor on, we get down the other seven chests and discover five of the chests have suits of armor similar to what Cap’n is now wearing. The seventh chest has a warhammer, and four orbs in it: red iron, blue chrome, green copper, and yellow brass. Milli following the actions of Cap’n grabs the blue orb and a figure steps out from the ground bubbling up. Milli drops the orb and screams, and it goes rolling away. I scramble for the orb and feel a great evil presence turning on me. I will the creature back into the orb, and take a deep breath for the battle avoided. We open the final chest and find a belt pouch with coins, a cloak that I put on because apparently, we’re just putting stuff on now. The cloak makes me feel warm and stealthy. But as I try to stealth around Milli says, “I can see and hear you if you’re trying to stealth.” “Stupid coins are making me not stealthy,” I mumble. “It’s not the coins. Your cloak is glowing.” I look down and darn it, she’s right. The stupid thing is glowing. No matter how much I try I can’t make the cloak stopped glowing, but I do feel rather invincible in the cloak, like that old folk hero I used to hear about who could fly and withstand arrows being shot at him. He had an “S” on his shirt.
Report Date
21 Dec 2021
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