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Message: <blockquote data-quote="lykkenthrope" data-source="post: 9790847" data-attributes="member: 7045440">Session 21The session opened with the party skirting the edge of the lake, making their way toward Gwen’s lagoon, said to be about four miles away. The group was on alert. The previous night’s disagreement still hung in the air, their path forward unresolved except for the fact they must keep moving towards some inevitable end.A mile into the trek, Ze caught movement through the burning trees: a flicker of something dark slipping between the flames. Her first thought was Kayzk, but she held her tongue. If the fiend didn’t know he’d been spotted, perhaps she could catch him off guard. She crept forward for a better look and nearly lost her footing, the ground beneath her was slick with wet mud.Grom noted that it was a good sign if the water wasn’t instantly burning away, that they must be getting close to the lagoon as the Seela had mentioned that the flames were weakest at Gwen’s lagoon. Sorian agreed but remarked that they should only be about halfway there.Ze walked over to the lake to rinse her boot off and water exploded towards her. A giant crocodile lunged from the lake, its jaws open wide. Sorian, already on edge, reacted instantly shoving Ze out of harm’s way which left him wide open for the croc’s attack as it snapped its large jaws down on his upper legs and torso.Ze landed hard in the mud, the edge of the forest flames singeing her a bit. Though she then noticed an odd sensation…the was moving. The mud gripped her legs and began to envelop her, acid burning her legs. The mud was a grey ooze.Even with the crocodile’s jaws crushing him, Sorian shouted for the others to help Ze. Torrent, Vic, Crystin, and Reshi sprinted toward her while Grom readyed his axe focusing on the large “swamp puppy” attempting to drag Sorian into the lake. Sorian roared as he called upon his ancestors, but the croc’s jaws only tightened. Thankfully Grom’s first swing cut deep and his second took it’s tail clean off.The croc twisted, giving Sorian the chance to free himself from the croc’s bite and smash his maul into its skull.While this was occurring, Ze had managed to wrench herself free from the ooze just as Vic unleashed a spell that cleaved it in half. The two halfs melted into puddles that then began to bubble and reformed into two smaller oozes. Reshi and Torrent each tried a different spell, but with the same result. Within moments there were 4 oozes.By the time Grom and a bloodied Sorian reached them, the fight had become chaos with 6 oozes on the attack. Sorian, recognizing what they were, grimaced as he shouted for everyone to stop using spells and to just hit them. After everyone changed tactics they quickly had the oozes dissolving into sludge.As torrent was tending to Sorian’s wounds, Grom pointed out that fire had ignited on the crocodile’s corpse and everyone decided it was best to keep moving before the croc came back for round 2. Before leaving, Vic crouched beside one of the dissolving puddles. Unable to help herself, she scraped a bit of the strange sludge into a glass vial and sealed it tight before slipping it into her bag.Then the group pressed on, choosing to stay closer to the forest’s edge than the water. After another hour’s walk, the group reached Gwen’s lagoon without further incident. The lagoon was beautiful. The water was clear and most breathe taking was an island in the center that was not on fire, but rather filled with bright red blooming flowers.There was no movement on the water. Reshi and Ze wanted to scout ahead quietly, but Sorian stepped forward instead, taking the last strip of dried jerky from his pack. He called out in a steady voice, holding the meat up as an offering. This garnered a hilarious observation from Grom as he told Sorian he was “bold for offering dried meat to a wet lady”They heard her voice before they saw her. They heard an angry, but sad voice asking why had they come…were they there to torment her. That is when they saw her, hiding amongst the reeds, a sad creature with long oily black hair slicked to her face, murky blue skin that was wrinkled and pocked, and streams of red tears coming from her eyes.Sorian explained they were adventurers needing to get out of the forest and it seemed to do so they would have to take on Indomitability. Gwen’s thin hand reached out from the reeds to take the offering before retreating further into the reeds.She said she did not truly know what Indomitability was, only that “the creature was simply being what it was” when it wandered into the Innenotdar; That no one even tried to talk to her, they just attacked her for being different, other. Yet even as she defended the creature’s nature, her voice broke when she admitted she hated Indomitability for being the reason Arielle had died.Vic tried to empathize with her, to coax her out of reeds by asking about Arielle. Gwen fluctuated between rage and depressed sobs, sharing that she missed Arielle, that she had loved Arielle and Arielle loved her. That Timbre had become infatuated with Arielle, she thought Arielle a champion of the forest, her champion…but Arielle was a champion for her people, there was nothing she wouldn’t do for them. She needed the Living Blade to drive back the Shalahasti and the only way to obtain it was to accept Timbre’s advances.In the beginning Gwen understood, but jealousy slowly creeped in. Then suddenly her secret trysts with Arielle were found out their romance was twisted into something dirty. The unfairness of it all twisted her into something horrible and ugly, consumed by rage.Sorian and Ze refocused Gwen back on the task at hand: the fire, the Seela, that they needed to free Indomitability, but they were hoping to find a way to either save the Seela or kill Indomitability. Initially Gwen was angry at the ideas of the fires being put out, that the fires were a cosmic justice keeping Timbre from joining Arielle in death. But eventually was convinced that Arielle would not want her forest to be like this, that Arielle would want anyone who could be saved to be saved.She fell into heavy sobs that she felt so small that she did not know how to save the Seela, and hated that Timbre might.When they asked about the lock of Arielle’s hair, Gwen admitted she had it and clutched it tightly, saying it was the last piece of Arielle left in this world, refusing to part with it. Vic promised they would return it once its purpose was served. Which caused the others to exchanged sidelong glances. Grom whispered to Reshi that promising things to crying swamp women rarely ended well, which earned him a rare smirk from the dragonborn.Gwen left for a bit and then returned with the hair. This time she rose completely out of the water allowing the group finally saw her clearly and fully understanding why the Seela thought she had become a hag. (Though, Vic and Grom commented later that they could sill see the remnants of her beauty, perhaps she wasn’t fully lost.)As Gwen handed the locket of hair to Vic, she paused and said that she knew Vic was promising something she could not guatentee, but she was helping them for Arielle. However, if they wanted her help when they eventually went to face Indomitability they would have to return the hair to her.(Session End)</blockquote>

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