A Strange New World

[Jemal]

Forest Grove,
Late Morning

After a short, uneventful walk, you arrive at the charred, smashed remains of the town. There are no dead bodies anywhere in sight, nothing but a few tumbled down buildings, and the shattered, burnt timbers from other buildings remains in the clearing.
As you approach, you notice that all the trees within 50 feet of the clearing are dieing.
Sabal seems to be very nervous, and you all feel an unsettling presence.

 

[Keia]

Forest Grove,
Late Morning

"Harummpf, doesn't look like there's much to recover from here. That's too bad, many of the people here bought things on credit from my shop," Pent said.

Pent will get off his pony and tie it off to a still living tree outside the area of the town. He will make sure all of his adventuring gear is with him and have a look around the perimeter by the rest of the group [Spot +12, Search +11].

 

[Gurdjieff]

"My God, what has happened here? Where are all the people? And the trees! Look at them!"
Yvonne looks around the village, searching for anything that might have caused this destruction.

 

[Argent Silvermage]

Stay here a moment. I'm going to look around the town square. Avan will start detecting Evil in the area. Do the trees seem like they are dieing out from a center radius point of the town?

 

[Wippit Guud]

Biff will scout around looking for any indication of what caused this. (search +5, wilderness lore +7 for track)

 

[Jemal]

The heroes quickly fall back into the habits they had before crashing here, efficiently inspecting the remains and surroundings.
Pent finds nothing of value.. what was not burnt or broken seems to have been taken, though from the large amounts of debris, it's more likely that whoever or whatever did this merely smashed everything that didn't burn.

Yvonne and Biff start searching the perimeter, and soon find signs of a large force of humanoids attacked... there are tracks of at least 4 dozen skinny, bare feet entering and exiting from the north. Biff notices something odd about them, but can't quite put his finger on it.

Avan, meanwhile, detects a lingering trace of evil all over the place, but as he turns, he finds that one spot in the town has a trace that is MUCH more powerful than the rest.. A type which he has found is usually associated with the casting of powerful evil spells.
Upon further searching, the group realizes that the spot this spell was cast from is at the exact center of the dead tree-ring, as if whatever radiated out from it is what's killing the trees.

As they all begin to report back their findings, Yvonne spots a humanoid skull wedged under a board near the edge of town.

 

[Gurdjieff]

"You there! Halt!" Yvonne yells at the creature, pointing in its direction and running towards it. Not knowing if it is friendly or hostile, she'll ready Warhammer and shield, showing the symbol printed on the shield very clear.

[OoC: Shield has a mark of Pelor on it.]

 

[Argent Silvermage]

Avan will turn to hear Yvonne yell and remark Priestess why are you yelling at a skull? He will await her reply but continues to keep an arrow knocked in his bow.

 

[Sulli]

ill go over to where the skull was spoted. once there ill just take a look around the skull in a area of about 5 feet. "well what ever happend hear i think this guys was involved or an inosent bystanderd."

 

[Jemal]

As Taben goes closer, the Skull emits a brief flash of light from the eyes, then explodes into a large dust cloud as you all hear a faint, evil laugh. The dust cloud does little more than make Taben (The only one inside the cloud) cough for a few moments, and though he feels a dark presence claw at his very soul, he is able to fight it off and recover from the dust.
As the light flashes, Avan feels a brief surge of evil energy, which dissapears with the dust as Yvonne lets an arrow fly, but it does nothing more than embed into the wood behind where the skull had been.