Leaving everything in the underground room as it is, you head back up the stairs, stepping out of the cool blue luminescence and into the bright flickering firelight. You search the surrounding village and find 600gp worth of coins and other valuable metals and gems. It's likely this used to be fine art and jewelry that has melted in the heat. You walk back along the road towards the bridge over the White River, detouring around the bridge to the bank of the river.
The heat from the indomitable forest fire has shrunk the river. Normally fifty feet across, it's now only thirty, exposing a ten-foot strip of sand and smooth river rocks on each bank. Standing on the bank you recall your
previous discussions about heading up river to follow clues in Bhurisrava's journal. The wide river bank makes travel easy even though you're no longer on the elfroad.
The wind coming downstream is strong. Twice while you travel clouds of burning cinders billow out from the burning forest and engulf you, nauseating some of you with fits of coughing from the the heat and smoke. A third cinder cloud engulfs you. You quickly cover you mouths and hold your breath, but
Hollister is still overcome with coughing.
When the cinder cloud clears and Hollister is still recovering you see a
strange creature swooping down from the burning trees ahead of you. It has about a dozen claws attached directly to its large goblin-like head.
[sblock=set-up]Everyone roll initiative. Anyone who beats a 16 should also post their action.
Right now I don't think we need an actual map. Everyone's together on the 10-foot wide riverbank and the monster's flying up ahead.[/sblock]
