Copse Troubles

 Present:

• 

  Monty the Goth's caravan

  Sophia Beauchamp (half-elf priest 21) - Ian
• Jo Manco (human fighter) - Shane
• MARMALADE: Balder Dash (gnome wizard) - Jamie
• Slim Jim (human rogue) - Darryl
• Walton Formalin (half-elf mystic of 21) - Andrew
• Red Feuersturm (human temple fighter of Hob) - Chris
• Donk Platebreaker (human fighter) - Jeff
• Malcolm Gandhi (gnome thief) - Kevin

By Walton

Solitary horseman

Last time, we had just crossed the Spoon river, and had overcome some troubles there, then we had seen a distant solitary horseman at the end of each day, and had found the signs of a recent fight (presumably caused by him).  

Sophia was having troublesome and disturbing dreams, every night now, and it was affecting her rest. No longer could she get any sleep. [ No magic recharge nor a healing recharge over night. Luckily, the holy-wafer magic-recovery still worked; that worked by knocking the priest unconscious and regaining 2d4 points. ] These dreams had started happening during the day now.

We all suspected it was Monty's prize slave - the young girl (ten-year-old looking) held alone in the small cage with bars made of solid silver. We had all been told, right from the start of this trip, to never speak or even get near this girl; under pain of death! One morning, Red happened glance over and notice that the girl was playing with small flames, in her bare hands.

He thought to himself: Fire? A Hob priestess?

He looked at her surreptitiously, she looked back, and he heard, in his head "Help me! Do not let me get to Draser. They will kill me. Please!"

Rather than do something rash that would get him (or us) killed, he came and spoke to me and Sophia. We chatted and the he compared his experience with the words Sophia heard in her head, and the messaging was the same. 

We did some experimenting. I escorted Sophia back a good league [ kilometre ] behind the caravan, and the bad effect vanished. Well, that proved that! 

Monty didn't like this "slacking off", despite a "we were just scouting the rear-guard, sir!".

"Don't do that again," he barked.

A few days later we arrived in the town of Able (pop 1390) which had a major crossing of the Oxfam river [ think Waikato through Hamilton size ]. Monty said we had two day's break here. 

So we partook of the pleasures of Able. There was a Vingt-et-Un temple here - the Five Card Stud Casino, so Sophia and I stayed there. In the consecrated ground, the silver-cage girl had no affect on Sophia. We spoke to the Priestess there, Anne Simons, and she told us that she had seen Simone Fussel - the woman we were sent to Draser to find - when she passed through Able four weeks ago. She said Simone was not a 21 priestess, but was a sell sword.

The rest of the group went to the Hammer and Tongs (it being the tavern closest to the 21 temple). They basically requisitioned the common room for their very own. There were two others staying there, a gnome called Joshua and a man called Jasper, but Slim bullied and threatened them, and they fled.

Other than that, the two days passed and we were on the road again: Draser ho. However, Sophia's dreams got even worse. And now they were affecting Red too. He, too, could get no rest.

At breakfast the next morning, Slim felt sick. As the day progressed, he started to vomit. Then followed bouts of explosive diarrhoea. We were suspicious. So Sophia checked him out with a Detect Poison. He was reeking of it! And it was a slow poison but a death poison. It looked like the bullied Jasper and Joshua had got their revenge. A Neutralize Poison fixed him.

Red discovered he could communicate with the girl in the silver cage. If he was in line-of-sight with her and he talked out loud, he would voice a question and she would speak in his head.

So we got him to ask a bunch of questions. She was far older and wiser than a ten year-old. She claimed she was an avatar of Hob and was being sent to Draser to be destroyed or sacrificed. And that we were her only hope, and we had to rescue her.

Power of Hob

Needless to say, this put the group into a dilemma. We were doing a Vingt-et-Un mission, so both Sophia and I wanted nothing to do with putting the mission into any kind of danger. We did not include our newest party member Jo Manco into this discussion. He would be loyal to the caravan, so no way would he betray them. Red was all for rescue, being a Hob temple fighter. But the rest of the group (Gandhi, Donk, and Slim) logically concluded that they could not beat the entire caravan guard compliment, and they would all be killed. Balder was marmalading, so he had no coherent input. Red could see the logic in all this, so he resignedly accepted the decision.

The mysterious lone figure on a horse was still following us. Every day, an hour before dark, we would see him in the distance. Monty just said to watch him, and not to bother approaching him.

Sophia tried casting a Whisper at him; it works line-of-sight and sends a simple message. She asked the figure to raise his arm if he heard her. This turned out to be "not such a good idea". There was a crackle of magic around Sophia and she screamed and collapsed. When she came out of her fugue:

"Evil, darkness, black, death, skulls," she gibbered.

Needless to say, we didn't do anything else to the lone figure for the next few days.

One morning, two days out from Draser, a group of twenty soldiers approached on horse-back. They had brightly coloured livery and pennants. Someone recognized the colours of Draser. 

"Get those gnomes in the cages!" yelled Monty.

I helped Gandhi and the marmalading Balder into one of the slave wagons and ensured they were wearing their embroidered kobolds (the sign of legal slaves in Draser).

Draser Dragoons

The soldiers arrived and the Captain introduced the troops as Draser Dragoons. These are professional soldiers from Draser. All human, of course.

Monty had warned us all to show deference, and not to defy them in any way.

They went through all the wagons with fine tooth-combs. They demanded to know who owned Gandhi and I claimed such. Gandhi had his embroidered kobold badge and the soldiers were happy with that. A strategic punch into his fat gnome belly amused the soldiers, so I followed up with a back-hand to his mouth, drawing blood. 

Satisfied all was in order, the soldiers continued on their way back up the road behind us.

The next morning, we were rudely awoken by shouts. Monty was in a rage and punching anyone who got near him. One of the cage doors was wide open and all the slave girls - three humans and two half-elves in this case - were gone. Monty got his trackers onto the tracks around the door, and they followed the tracks out into the plains towards a copse of trees in the distance. 

Slim had a look too. His superb eagle eyes [ he got a critical ] spotted a slippered footprint in the mud which matched Sophia's shoe. Needless to say, he did not mention this to Monty. Sophia, when questioned, had no memory of this.

Monty sent us all and Jo Manco after them to get them back - "Or else..." Red had collapsed with marmalade, so we left him at the caravan (with the marmalading Balder).

Thick and tangled woodland

The copse was a league from the caravan (and probably 20 leagues from Draser). It was a circle of dense woodland, maybe a 1100 paces in diameter.

We waded on in. It was thick and tangled woodland, with a short visual range. Despite our best navigational techniques, we got lost. And we hopelessly lost the tracks of the slave girls we were following. The whole place had a magical tinge (Detect Magic).

Gandhi climbed a tree. Near the top, he could successfully see the caravan off in the distance. He cut some marks on the trunk and branches of the tree facing the caravan and descended, being extra careful to cut marks in the caravan direction all the way down. So when he got down to us, we headed in the direction of the last mark. But it was no use; we ended up going in a circle and returned to this same marked tree.

So, we tried the opposite direction. We didn't find our way out of the forest, but instead found a shaft in the ground descending, in a steep slope.

So, dutifully, we marched down the steep slope. We must have magically shrunk on the way down. The roots in the shaft walls grew and grew, and we emerged into a set of tunnels with giant roots all around. We encountered some ants, and a mole, both huge, so we fled these. In a chamber to one side was a dead man, weeks dead, dressed like an adventurer. The whole place reeked of magic (Detect Magic).

Down one dead end, the sides and roof of the tunnel had little crawl-passages, with many small roots in them. There was some attraction magic on these, because various members of the group would be possessed and ensorcelled, and would keep returning to these crawl passages, in a trance, to try to crawl up them, and climb the roots. The trance wasn't very strong and it was easy for us to break the victim out of it.

Eventually, we exhausted all of the network of tunnels, and we didn't want to go through the mole's home, nor the ants' city, so we followed possessed and deliberately chose to climb the root tunnels.

It was a very tight squeeze, and I had to make much use of the Spider Climb spell to help the non-climbers, and Feather fall to rescue those who could climb but fell. At the top of the root crawl-passages, it got very tight - we suspect we were growing back to normal size at this point. Donk and Jo had to help push the weaker of us through the last few metres of tunnel.

After much to-ing and fro-ing, we all (Donk, Slim, Gandhi, Jo, Sophia, and me) eventually managed to get into an enclosed chamber of earth. We were not sure if we were actual size at this state or still shrunken miniatures. However, one thing we were sure of was that Sophia had vanished.

Dryad and the run-aways

Sophia addendum:

The long-legged dryad, whose beauty made you cry, brought in a second platter of creamy brie, crisp crackers and dried quince paste. She was dressed in a tight green tunic and flowing skirt that clung to her shapely legs, with her long green hair cascading down her back. 

Sophia was reclining on a chaise longue sipping honey mead, and nearby were the five runaway slave-girls; the ones Monty had ordered the group to recapture. 

The last thing Sophia remembered was climbing up the root tunnels, with Jo's grubby hands on her butt pushing her through the last few tight feet of tunnel. Then, suddenly, she was in the light and airy room with the slave girls and the beautiful dryad.