Thorn whip for the win!

General Summary

Once Cap is back to himself after he learned Don't pick up cursed weapons , we started to head out. As I glanced over, I noticed two of the little sea monsters left the cave. I'm sure that won't come back to bite us later.
As night fell, I transformed into a wolf to better travel through the dangers of the forest. Thankfully our return trip was much less memorable and we get to the town walls without any further gates. 

Enemy at the gates

The answer becomes clear as we see three large lizard creatures attacking the walls. The fight was intense but brief, they weren't expecting an attack from behind, we convinced the guards at the gate to let us in and we drag in one of the corpses for meat.
We bring the carcass to the tavern, but find a disconsolate town, people have gone missing while we were out, and no one knows what happened to him. We offered to see what we could find out.
I turn into a bloodhound and cast about to find any unusual smells, we found evidence of blood and a foul smell. As we explored we heard a strange song coming from the woods, but it feels wrong for what is going on.
I transformed back and pulled Papa Legba out, "Papa, what can you tell us? What's going on?"
"Someone be calling the Dark Loa, they've released remnants of the Dark One to call back the Lord of the Final Gate. He needs shadows of the lord to call him forth. Beware the Hidden Places where the sun never reaches, where the sky and moon do meet. Where darkness gathers in corners reaching out to draw you in. A Stone Chair with shadow bound servants all around chanting, yearning, calling, binding till life is no more and only darkness abides forever more."
"That be not sounding good," Cap said. We listened a little more, but everyone agreed going into the woods right then would solve nothing, so we headed back to the tavern to rest for the night, keeping watches.

More missing people

We entered the tavern to a quiet room, I sat down at the table with a few of the seafolk, "What happened?"
"Two more missing," the sailor answered me, "they took a dinghy, and even worse a sea monster disabled our ship and we can't leave."
I glanced over at my teammates, I was pretty sure why no one could leave. Death From Below probably didn't want anyone to leave until we could find the problems.
"That be bad news," Caps commisserated, "I be going to ask your Thane what we can do to help."

Cap wandered over to the Thane's table, "Thane we be hearin' the bad news, what can we do to help?" As they talked I looked around the room. The conversation was more or less what I would expect, but something felt off in the corner.
"Cap," I said quietly, "the corner, it feels off."  Cap squinted at it and cast a spell. Suddenly the corner was alight and a foul smell came from the corner.
"That puts a damper on my plans," the newly revealed ghoul said. "I had planned to get more useful tools, I had such a perfect plan hiding as the skald. Oh well." He lunged forward to run out of the building.
We ran after him, I cast thorn whip and yanked him back towards us. The ghoul said something and two creatures appeared near us, battering us with their claws. The ghoul started to run again.
Marcus pulled out his flute and started to play. The creatures danced to the tune, but the damage was done, I was gravely wounded and going down. Thankfully Cap was able to heal me and I ran after the big bad ghoul. He hit me again, leaping up to the wall trying to scale it, but I grabbed him with thorn whip again pulling him back. He cursed and tried to hit me again, but Cap hit him, and he fell down dropping a scepter.

Report Date

22 Jul 2022