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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Justinian" data-source="post: 1168812" data-attributes="member: 6358">Session 1b: Deals with Fish, and Stepping into the UnknownIn the morning, some decided to track the tasloi, while Wallace, Haakon, and Adrian remained behind with the noncombatants. The others headed into the forest, following a faint trail that ran toward the center of the island. Along the way, they were ambushed by many tasloi, but repelled them easily. Again, the tasloi tried to flee when the skirmish turned against them, and one even tried to surrender, gasping it out in broken Common. The party killed the fleeing tasloi and captured the verbose one for later “discussion”.About four hours down the trail, they found the tasloi village, a small collection of ramshackle huts draped with sailcloth grouped at the bottom of a valley. No sign of life could be seen, and there were only a couple dozen huts, so it was assumed that the tasloi had been fully defeated. The unusual thing in this valley was the existence of a tower, or more accurately, the lower half of a tower. At about thirty feet up, it stopped, as if some mighty force had melted the walls away. Small outbuildings surrounded the tower, and the party went down to investigate them. After an hour or so of searching, leaving the tower carefully alone, nothing had been found other than the remains of the tasloi’s looting except for a wide tunnel leading downward. They marked the tunnel for inspection, and started searching the tower. It was simply laid out inside, with only two floors. A circle was trodden into the dirt on the lower floor, and on the upper floor a complex magical diagram was drawn, right above the circle. On searching the room, Riguallaun found an invisible staff, a secret compartment, and a notch in the floor. The secret compartment contained an fearsome mask, sized for a tasloi. The one they had captured was very free with information, and explained that the tasloi shaman wore the mask when he sent prisoners to their god. Apparently the tasloi worshipped the sky, or something living in the sky. Questioning the tasloi proved frustrating, and finally they gave up. Iayen, experienced in the ways of magic, determined that the diagram was a conjuration spell, but inactive, and Othi placed the staff in the notch. This caused the diagram to activate, and Popo considered it likely that they were seeing a teleportation circle.This was a little too risky to explore at the time, so they decided to see about the tunnel. Othi, Popo, Vash, and Baikal headed into the darkness, while the others guarded the top. After traveling downwards for the length of two torches, they came upon a crossing in the tunnel, and more importantly, a kua-toa patrol. Baikal moved first, his crossbow bolt plunging deep into the leader’s head, staggering him instantly. The leader cried out “Stop! We surrender! If you killed tasloi, we make deal with you.” The group decided to stand down, and further dialogue revealed that the kua-toa were causing the fogs, and the tasloi paid them with bodies from the ships to eat. The tasloi took the wood and sails from the ships to make houses, since their lack of building skills ensured that most of the huts lasted only a few months. Apparently this had been going on for about two years, though the kua-toa wouldn’t or couldn’t tell how many ships had been taken this way. The group decided to sell the dead tasloi bodies to the kua-toa, and managed to bargain for 25 gold and 25 silver each, expressed to the kua-toa as a number of “piles that big”.After selling the corpses to the kua-toa, the party gave the shaman mask to their tasloi prisoner, freed him, and informed him that he was the shaman now. They placed the staff in the floor notch, and walked through the circle...</blockquote>

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