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Message: <blockquote data-quote="lykkenthrope" data-source="post: 9463940" data-attributes="member: 7045440">Session 14: Cruelpigs party do not read upon pain of toadSession started with the group inside the tower. Immediately the heroes noticed a life sized statue of a female Elven warrior right as the entered holding a shield with a symbol of a unicorn on the front. There were runes on the ground that Torrent and Vic did not immediately recognize. As those two inspected the statue, Ze and Reshi cautiously explored the rest of the smallish first floor. Sorian after glancing around the room for another other spiritual traps, walked over to the statue, recognizing the unicorn as a symbol for Meilikki, said a small prayer and as he spoke the words the runes at the base of the statue activated and arcane energy whooshed through the room, the statue began to glow and was now holding a glowing rock in their formerly empty out stretched hand.  A table appeared by right side of statue hosting a quill & ink, jar of dirt, a dagger, and a bottle of green paint. The shield had a ghostly script scroll across the front first in Sylvan, but then morphed into Common.[SPOILER="DM Note. "]We had a two week break  in between  session and I changed this from a room trap to a reward for solving, I also spent HOURS perfecting my riddle, mish-mashing a few I found onlineand tailoring it to the setting. Also making sure it was a riddle that if my Grom PC figured out the anwer he could role play actually having his -1 Int character answering.  (very on the nose)  I play tested it on multiple people not in the campaign and most found it very difficult.  Not one person I play tested it on figured out both parts solo.  I  was expecting this to take up a fair amount of the session (or them not care).  My Torrent's PC figured it out before I even finished reading the dang riddle. It was demoralizing, but she IRL needed the confidence boost so it made me happy in the long run.  I'll share the riddle in another spoiler below [/SPOILER][SPOILER="DM Note. Riddle"]Here we stood and here we fellOur strength we saved for a hero for-telledTo gather such, a payment is dueFrom the river of life welling up inside of you.Answer this riddle upon stone,To prove ye friend and not enemy drone.Every Dawn begins with me,At dusk I’ll be the first you see,And daybreak couldn’t come withoutWhat midday centers all about.Daises grow from me, and I am toldThat when I come, I end all cold,But in the sun I won’t be found,Yet still each day I’ll be around.[/SPOILER][SPOILER="DM Note. Riddle Answer"]Write the letter "D" in blood on the outstretched stone[/SPOILER]Torrent, impressively and immediately knew the answer and after some discussion about how to answer, Sorian volunteered his blood as he was a child of the forest.Sorian cut his finger a littler deeper than he intended as Ze distracted him.  Ze and Reshi had found the near mummified remains of two soliders, and with Ze's having seen the dead be used as risen combatants during her time as an Inquistor that she beagn to decapitate the remains so they couldnt be revived. After a brief argument about desecrating his people, Sorian wrote the letter D on the glowing stone and the Sheild began to glow and transformed into a real shield pulsing with arcane energy.Sorian picked up the shield and felt immediately connected with it, its powers fully open to him. However, Sorian knew he could not use the shield effectively in battle and offered the shield to Torrent. She hefted it, but did not feel that her God Mercium would want her to attune to a magic item of Meilikki. Just as Sorian took the shield back, going to keep and protect it as a relic of his ancestors, Grom asked if he could have the shield, while he could not currently use it as he had given up his Arms of the Righteous in favor of the Indomitable Spirit boon for the time being, he saw the potential for the shield in the future.With that that completed, the heroes gathered at the base of the stairs Ze began carefully going upstairs, sending her shadow ahead of her. Vic paused briefly to say a prayer for the two soldiers (and then took a chain shirt off one of them <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="🤦‍♀️" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f926-2640.png" title="Woman facepalming    :woman_facepalming:" data-shortname=":woman_facepalming:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" /> and the body turned to dust as she handled the remains.)  cue a very dirty look from SorianZe and her shadow cleared the second floor not finding anything mechanical that could hurt them and did not sense anything magical that wished them harm. The first thing that drew Vic’s eye was a religious carving of a sunrise on the far table. It had a faint glow and Vic immediately recognized it as a symbol of Lethander, a “rival” god of healing to her Mercium and the Aquiline Cross, but knew him to be a good God.Vic was fairly certain the symbol was a glyph of healing and touched it and was filled with faint healing magic. Torrent, sensing the healing magic, came to see what Vic had found and also touched the symbol and happily found that it seemed reusable. They called over Ze and Reshi, the two most hurt of the party and had them touch the glyph as well.  Reshi did take some conviencing that the table was not going to eat him before he would touch it.  Unfortunately, after Reshi touched the symbol, it stopped glowing and offered no more healing.Torrent went to stand with Sorian who was still by the stairs and noticed that while there was some cracks and holes in the stone walls due to disrepair and age, every 2.5ft there were man-made intentional divots in the stonework. On one of the divots, he could see the corner of a unicorn horn and realized that symbols of Meilikki used to adorn the walls, but they had been purposely defaced.Reshi and Ze went to examine the bed and trunk on the far side of the room.  Ze remarked on the amount of dust on the covers, and gingerly opened the pack that was sitting on the bed.  She found bandages with runes on them and gloves that seemed to belong to a healer based on the delicate material they were made of, but the amount of dried blood splattered on them. Ze tossed them to Vic and she inherently knew if she wore them then she would do a bit more healing with her spells.Reshi used this time to explore the trunk on the floor, which he found a small landscape drawing of a woodland village, a portion of dispel magic, and a jar of silver thick liquid that smelled sweet even through the jar. He could not identify it himself but chose to pocket it and investigate it further at a later time. Vic went back to explore the table with the glyph and noticed two journals wrapped in twine, she could not read the language the were written in.[SPOILER="Dm note. Major Opps."]So, somehow when Sorian made his character sheet he thought he was getting Slyvan in lieue of Elvish. I didn't realize this until a campfire comment inbetween sessions when Sorian mentioned it.  How he explained it was Elvish was the language of the high elves, and just another way they made the wood elves "other" but calling their lanuage "elvish" as if Slyvan wasn't the fey-elves mother tounge. Sorian made the comment that most of his people refused to learn Elvish out of spite.  Honestly, it felt really apt and added another layer of Shalahasti vs Taranesti divisive layer. So I had to change all the books they found in the Tower to be written in Slyvan which really limited which characters could interact with them. [/SPOILER][SPOILER="DM Note, Story Spoilers"]Sorian is obviously fluent in Sylvan, but Ze is intermediate. I figured that Decpetion would have learned about the song in searching for Indomitablity and woudl have advised Leska to instuct her Inquistiros in Sylvan to eventually come take the forest by force if it came down to that, and a way to control potential trilliths that would oppose Freedom's plot[/SPOILER]Ze read through the first book with some difficulty, explaining the Cleric of the Tower was a healer named Bhurisavra, who attempted in vain to heal those afflicted by the fires in the forest. Unable to keep the flames from burning, this Taranesti healer lost faith in the Goddess Mielikki, to which Torrent pointed out the destroyed iconography. He wrote about leaving something behind at the shrine of Arielle, which Sorian stepped in to assist as soon as he heard the name "Arielle" brought up.At this point, Sorian explained to everyone who Arielle was, to the best he could recollect, and her general significance to his people, and that her shrine was in the village just across the river. He had visited it many times with his parents and grandparents. He also explained his theory regarding Indomitability being the evil beast sealed at the bottom of the lake by his Elven heroine..The second book appeared to be a log medical records and further experimentation regarding the fires. The healer also wrote about the goblins who helped had set the fires, and specifically he wrote about "Dream Seeds," these items distributed amongst the goblins to aid them somehow in burning down the wood. It was unclear who exactly was responsible for the Dream seeds, but as far as Sorian was concerned, it must be some old Ragesian plot to try and remove themselves from direct blame for burning down the Innenotdar.Wanting to get rest, but needing to ensure the Tower was fully safe, the group pushed up to the top of the tower, where Torrent found a storage space and a closed door. Sorian and Ze assumed the door to be locked, and approached it slowly and cautiously. Grom, ever one for the simple solution, simply opened the damn thing and let everyone inside.Past the door was more simple healing items and cleaning supplies and an interesting purple bag with goblin writing on it. Vic showed the group the bag, which Sorian guessed contained the "Dream Seeds" that the healer had written about. Vic investigated and sure enough, within were several of the dangerous little bear-seeds. Crystin became drawn to the seeds as soon as they were removed from the bag, and upon holding one she began reciting an odd phrase in Draconic. Reshi was able translated for everyone else's understanding, ("Return to the Mother, Captive in Freedom. Wake up, Wake up") and Vic, with Sorian's help, removed the seed from Crystin’s grasp. After she came too, she expressed a desire to eat the seed, feeling that a prophecy was contained inside, which nearly everyone felt was a terrible idea. Sorian, not trusting Crystin's powers and worried about a magical lure on her diviniation magic, suggested that someone take the Dream Seeds and separate them from her. Crystin seemed sadden by the lack of support, but most everyone felt it was too late to embark on a potentially bad idea.  Vic seeing see the girl struggling to speak her mind, and it was clear she was still finding the will to assert herself, reassured her that no one here was her father and they were all equals and encouraged her to speak her mind. Crystin doubled down on the helpfulness of her powers, and Sorian made an agreement with her - separate the seeds for the next few hours, allow everyone time to rest and recover, and when everyone could assist in a safe experiment, they would let her follow her gut feeling.  This perked Crystin up immensly.  Torrent offered to take the bag and sleep upstairs behind the housekeeping door. Before passing the bag to Torrent, Vic was able to slip one seed out of the bag and into her pocket with no one noticing.As everyone was setteling down for a well deserved long rest, the group discussed their next moves. There was clearly something important to explore at the Shrine of Arielle. On top of that, they still had an agreement to fulfill with Indomitability. Sorian expressed a distaste for releasing the spirit reiterating that last great warrior of the Taranesti had died to seal away a "great beast." If Indomitability was indeed this beast, releasing her back to the world felt like a massive betrayal to his own people.Ze, Vic, and Torrent sympathized with Sorian, but recognized that Indomitability boon would help them leave the forest safely--and at all--and that there was a greater world to save than a forest Sorian has already grieved.  Grom, with his literal mind, recalling a crypic whispher the voice in his head told him about curses being remembered as blessings in the annals of history, spoke a wise truth that perhaps Indomitability saved the forest, the trees were still there…they have not burned to ruin.  Perhaps Indomitability could be reasoned with and they could find a way to save both. Sorian looked defeated and sad at Grom.  Seeming to steele himself, he stated that "perhaps the legacy of the Taranesti was not something worth maintaining if it put Gate Pass--his home for much longer than this forest had been-- and perhaps the rest of the world, at risk".[SPOILER="DM Note, Story Spoilers"]. I did not see this logic as a possibility for Sorian and am now on the edge of my seat with the rest of the module and who they’ll eventually side with.  I had already planned that if the forest gets destroyed then Sorian's totem--a peice of the forest--that he uses to call his ancestors will turn to ash and he will be cut off from them.  He'll have to go to Ycglend forest for a new totem and connect with those spirits to gain that class feature back.  Is it bad if I want to see that happen? GMing is weird.[/SPOILER]The session ended with everyone going into a long rest, but there was an intense Campfire session that occured inbetween that I will post as a 14.5 write up!</blockquote>

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