19th March
* Having dealt with Kane’s little bat related booboo we traverse the bridge, picking out a route across its more stable sections and continue on our merry way through the fire forest, making decent progress (for the situation, poor visibility and choking air) until our path takes us between two stout hills, forming a shield from the pressing heat.
* Our path ahead is slightly blocked by a fallen tree, a dark recess has formed in the side of one hill where its roots ripped free, and upon investigation reveals a sort’ve hole or tunnel. Ever inquisitive our rogue (Kane) slithers his way down to find a cool cave, with a little stream that runs through pooling in the centre. With a bit of effort the rest of us join him and we take refuge there, filling our water skins, having a good long drink and generally recuperating.
* While resting we also have a good poke around discovering what can be best described as cave paintings, which our scholarly shaman believes to be messages left by goblins (of the razor tooth clan!). His investigations reveal that he believes the writing to be some forty years old (which coincides with the same time frame as the forest catching fire). Hidden in a niche near the end of the last message we find a sack containing a chunk of rather grubby (but still serviceable) gold coins, a leather bound ledger and a smaller sack containing 140 pieces of Shalhalisti Gold (same value as legal tender but we’re told they carry much more diplomatic weight to the right people!), and some little vials of grey smoke.
o The ledger reveals several business transactions between the Shalhalisti Elves and the Goblin tribes, mostly that the elves were supplying arms, funding and “shatterspell vials” an antimagic cloud grenade to this goblin tribe, reasons unknown.
* Sufficiently rested and a good deal richer we leave our little cubby hole and continue onwards following the main path through the forest (there are many side paths the join and split from the broken road we’re following, but Torrents urging causes us to leave them all un-investigated). Our uninterrupted trudgery is finally disturbed by an odd whooshing sound (which Brick and Lembit surmise to have been the pop someone teleporting).
o A few people gingerly step off of the path into the burning forest to investigate, finding a burnt bush with some odd trail marks, certainly someone or thing was standing here recently.
* We continue on our way but soon our path is blocked by a Gorge some 30ft deep, filled with burning brush, handily a stout (if slightly blackened) stone bridge crosses it but a large fiery looking dog sits on the other side “with an air of cordial ferocity”, a long object clamped tight in its jaws (which upon reaching about halfway over the bridge is revealed to be a bone).
o Kane takes slow steps towards the beast and as he gets closer the Hellhound (as Lembit believes it is) drops the bone and pads to the side of the road, watching the half-orc with an air of expectance. Across the path, waiting in the forest is a collection of slightly mangy looking wolves eyeing the rogue hungrily. He takes another step and the wolves bark, padding forward; they’re intercepted by the hound that streaks into the forest, chasing them off.
* Kane retrieves the bone and retreats along with the rest of us to “our” side of the gorge, scratched into the side of the femur is a message. Lembit reads aloud “Leave the Case, Cooperate and we might find a way in which to spare your lives. Carry this bone with you if you wish to bargain!”
o And so begins a brief but powerful argument in which we decide if we should keep the bone or not, finally resolved with the bone being thrown over the side into the gorge. Uriel will suffer no more dealings with the infernal.
* We continue along the path, everyone slightly on edge awaiting the return of the Hellhound, so we aren’t greatly surprised when a short distance from us a chrysanthemum of fire blossoms and dies revealing a robed figure carrying an enormous jagged bladed glaive standing in the road ahead of us. He sweeps his glaive in front of him, causing several smaller demons to appear in the weapons wake forming a wall around him.
* He greets us quite happily and openly (but doesn’t give a name) and generally a mocking tone for our refusal to meet his and his masters wishes. He has orders to retrieve the case, but no specific deadline and wishes to have some “fun”.
o While not a particuarly taxing fight we do learn a few things about him, mostly he has a nasty “wounding glaive” that makes people bleed (more than normal!) when struck and can happily teleport around so is obviously immune to fire.
o Brick spent the entire fight throwing feeble insults at the devil and trying to stay as close to Lembit as possible… (Perhaps a blossoming romance, two lost souls thrown together in fiery inferno of passion?)
o Once we’ve given him a bit of a beating (and vice versa) he appears next to Brick “better luck next time” he whispers and vanishes.
* We continue along the path, ready for round two however it appears our bearded chum is in rush and instead of a devil we find a hamlet (barely more than a few buildings, all on fire) and sat near the side of a road is a dragonborn, we approach cautiously and he reacts likewise until we’re in easy talking distance, a few greetings soothes things some what and he introduces himself as Khadral of Clan Petrov and offers food and shelter. He points to one of the bigger buildings and leads the way through its burning rooms down into a cool cellar that he has made his own little shelter from the forest.
o Soon we find ourselves sat around with bowls of soup made from local vegetables (that have quite a kick to them, as you’d expect from growing in a fire forest!) and begins telling his tale (which enthrals or bores depending on your skill of the arcane arts) of his interest in the forest, his own investigations and alliance with a dryad of the forest. They believe that the power that keeps the forest burning is draconic in nature and he’s had some success in permanently dousing small areas of the forest. He’s ready to take things to the next step but his progress has been halted.
o The ritual he plans to cast requires some components that can be found in a cave, the first is powdered flint, easily found in the cave in abundance. The second however is a special type of mushroom; he has used up the supply of mushrooms near the caves entrance and is loath to go deeper due to a bizarre and haunting shrieking sound he hears coming from inside.
o Lembit takes the opportunity to share all knowledge he has of shrieking mushrooms and their ilk, causing torrent to immediately raise her objections to any plan of helping the dragonborn sorcerer and waste our limited supply of cooling draughts. At the mention of this Khadral pips up that he himself can brew more and will gladly brew up a batch while we’re collecting mushrooms, she relents once his offer reaches three days worth for everyone.
* Using Khadral’s directions we pick our way through the fiery forest paths and trails until we find a stony area devoid of fire and the entrance to the dank and earthy mushroom caves. Even from outside we can hear the repeating screaming shriek coming from the caves.
o Here Kane devises a “cunning” plan, taking several lengths of cloth and padding (from where, we’re not entirely sure…) and begins to wrap it around his head like a bizarre turban / ear muff hybrid… now suitably deafened Kane’s ready to proceed inside. No one else feels the need to copy his apparatus.
* The first chamber indeed has been picked clean of all but the tiniest of mushrooms, however we do find several areas of flint, a few cracks with a mallet later and we have more then enough flint to satisfy the sorcerer’s demands.
* With the flint ticked off the check list we start to investigate the cave complex, the next chamber in we discover is more of a ledge to a larger chamber, a spur of rock leads down like a ramp in to the rest of the dark chamber, another path leads off into an enclosed area (or possibly a second cave chamber completely) but that’s where the screaming seems to be coming from so we decide to go down the ramp (how terribly brave of us!).
* We reach the lower chamber floor without incident and shining a few lanterns (or waving magical fiery / glowing weapons) about we get a good idea of the side of the cave and spy various “patches of shrooms” here and there which contain some good size specimens of the type Khadral needs. Across the small stream that splits the cavern in two is a ladder seemingly bolted / fastened to the wall (and rusted to hell) that goes up to a smaller opening, one might guess (and correctly so) that this entrance also leads into the “shrieker’s cave” that we avoided.
* Having explored a little (not obviously not enough…) we begin to harvest mushrooms, generally splitting up and not being sensible at all, so it was a slight (if not totally unexpected) surprise when our brief stint of fungus farmers is brought crashing to a halt by the arrival of…. “a squelching sound”.. o
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* Mushroom People came from the darkness and unfortunately for him Cricket was the closest (by quite a margin) to their entrance and finds himself swarmed by the little blighters (quite quickly being reduced to 2hps, but doesn’t go down!). But the barbarian is saved by some timely healing from Uriel and Lembit as Brick, the noble Bard decided to continue picking mushroom, right up until the rogue fell over and then made a mad dash to save him that ended up with him tripping in the stream and falling in a rather unpleasant looking patch of mushrooms.
o We discover that the algae ridden floor is also covered with a dense network or grid of roots and tubers that the mushroom men seems to move from, uprooting, toddling along and then clamping back onto the roots. This has the side benefit of all being linked to one another allowing them to share hit points / split damage about, meaning they all stayed up and fighting before keeling over practically at the same time all expect one that managed to slink away into the darkness beneath the ramp which we discover leads deeper down into the fetid darkness.
* We use this lull to gather the rest of the mushrooms we require and then debate what to do next (which is to have a good search around and find out where the mushroom men came from).
* Its near this tunnel down that we find the bodies of some previous adventurers, their corpses now a bed for hundreds of tiny fungi and mushrooms, but digging about we find a rather hefty amount of coins, the smell of money wafting through his noise Kane suggests (rather noisily as he is still wearing his earmuff turban) that we go down deeper “that’s always where the best treasure is” he says almost sagely.
o So we do, and wish we didn’t as it gets so dark and “misty” with fungal spores we can’t see more than a few feet in front of us, the barbarian falls in a small hole clogged with more fungus people and takes a few hits before being dragged out. We admit that we aren’t equipped to deal with such a situation and withdraw, telling ourselves the squelching sounds we can hear aren’t laughter, no just the sound of them retreating, in fear… yeah… that’s it!.
* As down is right out, Kane proposes we check out the shrieking cave instead “bound to be something those things are shrieking about” and soon rather than “EEEEEEEEEEEK” I’m sure
we’re all hearing “TREASURE” screamed out every few minutes instead, we prepare ourselves and storm the shrieking cave to find… nothing..
* Well not nothing, just a disctinct lack of mushrooms for a chamber supposedly containing “shrieking mushrooms”… and so we stand around for a bit looking through the cave when Lembit has one of those “Oh I could kick myself for being so silly moments” and then begins to tell us more than we wish to know about the fickleness of the “Eye of Alarm” spell and how they will continue to howl long passed the actual event, digging through the rocks we uncover a small gem encased in metal framework that forms the shape of an eye. A few words and the gem crumble to dust, the screaming halts.
o We also uncover under a rock fall the bodies of an Elf and a bunch of goblins. Our shaman weaves a tale of his own imagination (but probably is true) an Elven paladin (as his armour and weapon suggest) took refuge here, casting the ritual to warn him of anything approaching, he was attacked by goblins and in the ensuring battle part of the cave collapsed killing them all, the eye however continued its vigil.
o Picking over the bodies reveals an old artefact, the Jewelled Badge of a Solar Palansis (a Shalhalisti Paladin Order), an object that offers the ability to boost (or apply if it lacks) the radiant damage of someone’s attacks. The badge quickly ends up pinned upon Kane’s tunic (an act I’m sure would make the dead paladin spin in his grave if he had one and perhaps it is this thought that spurs Lembit wish to give the old boy a proper set of funeral rites in the way of his people).
* With several sacks full of mushrooms we return to the sorcerers cellar, finding him and Torrent busy by the cauldron… brewing up potions.
* “Excellent, excellent, with these we can complete the ritual, douse the grove and free the dryad, we shall make history!” (The rest of us are thinking… you keep saying “we” instead of just “I” ….) and soon find ourselves caught up with him crazy plan to change the forest (for the better hopefully) and we follow him to Bag’nera’s (the dryad, who is also on fire) grove. o
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* The grove itself is a large clearing and set within is a circle of four vine wrapped trees (that are naturally on fire) in the middle of this is a small stone altar and it is here that Khadral shall conduct the ritual (along with Lembit and Brick assisting). “now” he explains quickly “we shall cast the ritual and once done it shall drives the draconic influence away, removing the terrible malaise that causes the flames to burn but not consume and spread…” he is quick to highlight that is won’t however put the fires out, so the grove will continue to burn as will the Dryad and her “children” (in reality four large bushes, I guess that’s what baby dryads look like…), just outside the grove (and quite a distance from her children) is a large pond in which her children must be taken. To douse them before the ritual is complete would kill them utterly.
* And so the ritual begins, with grand words, even grander gestures and the ongoing thought that the sorcerer isn’t entirely being honest about the simplicity of his “world changing ritual” and this quickly proves to be the case as more and more parts that he forgot to mention come to the fore.
o The ritual first halts the “regenerative” properties of the curse, causing Bag’Nera and her children to howl in madness inducing pain, she quickly forgets her children and tries to bolt to the pond (which would kill her out right), she however is tackled by Cricket, who has the lovely task of grappling a fire naked woman made of wood to the ground (ending up a bit burnt and singed).
o This then prompts the “groves defences” to activate; the fiery vines around the trees detach and form huge walls of interlocking vines that seal the Sorcerer, Bard and
Shaman inside the grove. As other vines lash back and forth trying to strike those inside.
o And finally the sheer power of the ritual cause landslides and earthquakes that cause huge fissures to open up around the grove… the one saving grace would be a fissure opens up underneath Khadrals feet as the vines strike him, knocking the unfortunate soul (yeah.. right) in… But the curse is broken, the dryad and her children must be taken to the pond and doused before the flames consume them.
* Cricket quickly rolls off of Bag’Nera and she sprints to the pool howling in pain, the fate of her children turns to us, an act that is slightly complicated by them also howling and thrashing away. Enter Uriel and Elisha the plant whisperers who manages to sooth them long enough that Cricket and Kane can dig them out of the ground.
* Our next problem is getting them across the chasms that now litter the grove, Kane offers a hastily constructed bridge of a fallen log… which tips into the chasm before anyone can even put a foot on it… we settle for leaping, trying to find the thinnest spot to cross, and then a mad sprint to the pond, four bushes and one wet dryad … Victory (for team outside the grove at least).
* Meanwhile inside the Shaman and Bard find themselves in a tricky spot as huge vines lash backwards and forwards, but find themselves a few safe spots where they can’t be struck and begin whittling away at the vines, cutting the tips off each tree in turn (creating larger safe spots) until finally they can cut themselves free.
* By this time Bag’Neera has recuperated from her ordeal enough to call her wayward trees off, allowing to pad up to the hole near the later, at the bottom of a very deep hole is Khadral, his leg twisted in one of those “oh I think its broken” angles, tiny fungal creatures seem to have formed a little circle around him… and then scatter into the darkness as the thudding squelching footsteps of something bigger can be heard…
