Session 22
General Summary
Facing the frozen bulk of part of the "The Bolt From The Blue," the party heard ominous creaking and groaning from within the ship and cautiously approached, weapons at the ready, before parts of the hull shattered and the frozen corpses of several of the former crew scrambled over the frozen wood and waves. The party quickly sprang into motion, dealing fierce blows to the necromantic forces and were making solid headway. Before too long, however, further groaning of tortured wood could be heard before two large figures emerged, eyes also glowing the eerie blue of the former crew. The hulking brutes began wading into the fight. It was during this period that Cas seemed to have a strange episode and instead of his allies, he saw his siblings fighting instead. Ducking out of the fight to put some distance between them as quickly as possible, he lobbed a fireball back at the melee around the ship.
As his friends cried out in surprise, he was able to shake off the mental vision and rejoin the cleaning up of the remaining enemies. Once the final corpses had shattered into nothing but shards of ice, Cas and Whisper spent some time looking through the interior of the ship, finding only the logbook which, strangely, indicated in the last entry that as recently as last week the ship had been off the coast of the Tetrine Empire far south in the Fury Sea. in examining the ice around the ship, they found that it seemed to be a roughly circular shape that, for all that could be told, essentially scooped out a chunk of the Icespine and a piece of the Fury Sea that happened to have part of the ship in it at the time and deposited the ship and water in the frigid region, flash freezing it instantly. The hulking brutes were apparently slaves that were in transport at the time, but no information was forthcoming on why they and the remaining crew would have become undead during the process.
After Bjorn marked the ship as Black Bear claimed, the party found a large snowbank further away from the ship and towards the mountain range they were heading towards. Bjorn quickly fashioned a snow-shelter which Whisper heated temporarily with his heat cube before Cas put up his, less aggressively, heated bubble for the night's rest. Belamin worked on extending their food supplies by starting a overnight stew and, in typical older brother fashion, Fitmir scooped out the newly made broth and proceeded to eat/drink that rather than the sandwich and salad that had been prepared for the evening meal.
During the night, Bjorn heard the sound of small wings but was unable to spot the bird in flight. As dawn rose over the mountains, the group, sensing Bjorn's impatience, speedily scarfed down the stew breakfast as Bjorn then broke down the snow shelter and started off towards the mountain pass. Setting a solid pace, the group made good times heading up into the range. It was during this hike though that an odd sense of wrongness began permeating through the group. As the day wore on, they began to notice that the mountains were eerily quiet. There was no movement or animal sounds. Just the stillness of the frigid surroundings.
Locating one of the Ghost Cat's stop-over caves, the group again made camp, now just a few days from the large Ghost Cat settlement that Bjorn was familiar with. Fitmir communed with the stone of the mountain and heard the stillness that seemed to saturate the region. Able to hear the faint movement of some small animals, it nonetheless confirmed that there was an odd stillness to the area compared to the mountains he knew from his home. As the night progressed, Bjorn again heard the sound of small wings in the time just prior to dawn, but still unable to see where the sound originated from.
Pushing even harder the next day, the group pushes deeper into the range. Whisper, deciding to keep an eye from above, coordinates with Bjorn to be carried while he looked down from above using Meiko's eyes as she flew over the trail. Still not seeing any sign of people or larger animals, Bjorn became increasingly on edge. When they made the last stop before they'd reach the village, Bjorn and Kenelm went searching the trail to see if they could find any additional information from the ground. Cas followed silently behind, keeping an eye on them. Seraphina, taking a few moments to simply enjoy the break from the grueling pace, proceeded to plop into the snow and make some snow angels with Deli watching on, amused.
In searching the ground, Bjorn and Kenelm were able to spot that at some point when the ground was softer, a large number of people had passed in both directions. However, due to the way the ground could soften and harden often through the fall and spring periods, it wasn't possible to tell exactly how long ago the most recent tracks had been laid or in which direction the freshest had gone. Fitmir tried communing with the stone again, but the distractions of Whisper working on jewel crafting, Seraphina's playing with Deli in the snow, and Belamin humming as he prepared dinner proved to be too distracting for him to shift his mental energies into the slow, steady speed needed for listening to rock.
Again, at the end of the last shift, Bjorn heard the sound of wings without being able to spot the culprit, only further pushing him to a sense of paranoia and edginess. Quickly rustling the rest of the group, they hastily completed the final push to reach the Ghost Cat settlement. As they rounded the bend in the trail, Bjorn instantly knew something was very, very wrong. The central totems that have pride of place in the center of the settlement had all been chopped down and there was no movement amongst the round houses that filled the clearing near the river. Cas quickly reached out to stop Bjorn from charging headlong into the unknown situation and offered to stealthily check the area just to be sure there wasn't an ambush in wait.
After getting Bjorn's reluctant agreement, Cas hummed a soft tune and faded from view before making his way to the nearest house. Peering through the torn hanging that had served as a door, Cas was greeted by the sight of several dead bodies. Quietly moving to other houses in the settlement, he found nothing but similar sights of a massacre that had occurred here. As he signaled for the rest of the party to approach, they found that there were no bodies of children and it seemed the vast majority of the dead were the elders, some men and women, but far less than should have been here. Additional searching revealed tracks and evidence of people being taken forcibly in the direction of the wooded area on the far side of the river.
As the party made plans on what to do next, the sound of a large pair of wings filled the air before a familiar face to Bjorn dropped onto one of the roofs of a nearby house. Greeting Bjorn, Tebu of the Raven Clan, made his entrance and advised that this was not a safe space to talk in detail, only advising that the raid consisted of Blood Bear, Wolverine, and, much to Bjorn's shock, Black Bear warriors. He wouldn't say more, but did remain to help as the bodies were gathered and pyres build to return the dead to the spirit realm. After a final repair of the broken totems to get them standing again, Tebu indicated the group should make their way to the Raven Clan's stronghold about a day a way in the upper reaches of the mountains.
Report Date
13 May 2023
Primary Location
Related Characters