Van Dyksun
First Post
Promises to Keep
An adventure in the Forgotten Realms (D&D3E)
Characters:Aoth Sepret (human Rgr 1/Rog 3/Wiz 3), Kaemris Tencoin (human Clr 6/Aus 1), Lenet cor Tarak (genasi Ftr 3/Sor 3), Van Dyksun (human Rgr 3/Rog 2/Clr 2)
Stones in the Road
from the journal of Kaemris Tencoin
16th of Ches, 1373 DR, Year of Rogue Dragons
Strange and wonderful things have always happened at the Fortunate Minotaur. Take today’s events for example:
As soon as the pair of travelers entered my taproom, I took interest in them. They claimed that they were seeking traveling swordarms for a journey into the forests east of Arabel.
Yet they looked more like a pair of boys. An unlikely pair, at that.
Boys who’d had their share of battles, of course–each bore a few blade scars–but for all that still young men. I put the polite and gangly white-haired archer at eighteen, and the other at just that or slightly less, perhaps seventeen. He was a forthright Southron with skin the color of rich tea and concentric circles etched into his forehead.
They took a table and ordered–as I recall–the mutton, with ale. The white-hair, who said his name was Van Dyksun, made it plain that he was touched by Selûne’s grace. He bore the crescent and Tear on a fine silver chain round his neck.
The other introduced himself as Aoth Sepret, the first part of which is pronounced like “Out.” He is Mulhorandi. Curious. They stayed for hours and hours by the hearth, drinking ale. They drank, and I drank with them from time to time, until finally Van commenced to speak about what he called their “mission.”
“We’re on a mission,” explained the white-hair amiably, “and we’re on an adventure to Hullack Forest.”
“An adventure, is it?”
“Well, that is…we’re keeping it under our hats.”
“Ah. A secret mission then. With what aim?”
“To put an end to these caravan raids. They say wild elves are to blame.”
Amazing! Two weeks ago the genasi, Lenet cor Tarak, arrives, and now this.
When they discovered my devotion to the Lady Who Smiles they urged me to join them. I protested that I was only an innkeeper, and had no interest in running pell-mell across the countryside, but no amount of excuses could deter them.
Finally I agreed that when morning came I would go with them. Even if it is just to see to their safety I’ll join them, but I admit I am also curious to know if wild elves are to blame. Whenever I have met them in my travels, the green elves have been shy, perhaps a little skittish at times, but never violent. Something is definitely amiss.
I told them that we’d also be taking Lenet along. She is the tiefling I mentioned earlier: a fire genasi from the Lake of Steam. She was, I told them, staying in this very inn. She seemed a competent warrior, with the strong scent of the arcane about her, her hair always wind-blown despite the stillness of the air. “Now isn’t that lucky?” I asked them.
Well, you’ll want to know something about me, I suppose, since this journal is, after all, a record of my journey to Hullack Forest. I am Kaemris Tencoin, of the Tencoins of Arabel, son of Danaan. Although I have traveled the lands all around Arabel–and fought the Grodd army at Hangman’s Court during the Ghazneth War–I am currently an innkeeper, helping my father, mother and sisters to run our family inn, the Fortunate Minotaur.
Recently I was inducted into the diplomatic and military Order of Auspicians, but only after I was lucky (and hearty) enough to survive the test of Tyche’s Blood. The poisonous draught sickened me for a night and a day, but it did not kill. By the Lady’s grace, of course.
Danaan Tencoin is prone to long silences these days, and is frequently away at Immersea bartering for supplies in the lake markets. This is particularly difficult time for my father–we heard recently that my Uncle Ulodrin was killed in the Haunted Halls last summer. Ulodrin was a traveling cleric of Tymora, like me, and my family is unlikely to take the news well that I am once again setting off on my own journey.
Selûne is waning…it will be dark on the trail. I sleep with Tymora’s grace within me.
17th of Ches
We set out on horseback this morning: Aoth, Lenet, Van and myself.
My mother sobbed, and my father just wished me all the luck in Tymora’s Chalice and turned away. My sisters, accustomed only to the drudgery of running an inn, watched me go with joyful smiles and tears streaming down their cheeks. It was difficult to tell if they were more saddened or envious at my leaving.
We’ve been riding a full day, but not yet reached Hullack. My companions were impressed with my fashionable Cloak’s ability to produce food and sugared tea, I must say, and even more impressed when the miraculous garment shook out into a one-person tent at dusk. Truly my most prized possession, it is.
We set turns and begin a long, chilly spring night’s rest. I’m resting in the tent as I write, but I’ll have to turn down the lantern and sleep soon. Then the everburning torch will have to keep away the gloom for the rest of the night. Call it a fault, if you will, but I can’t stand the dark. It absolutely knocks the wits out of me; sets my skin to shivering. I sleep now with Tymora’s light in my dreams.
18th of Ches
Around midday we crossed the Immersea River at Selvereth’s Ford. Two stony banks crowded close, spanned by a stout wooden bridge, while a roil of blue water tumbled over the falls just downriver. We took a meal in a shady grove just east of the Immersea, and I listened to starlings quarreling loudly in the boughs of nearby elms.
My companions and I have traveled all through the day, and now that it is twilight and once everyone has had enough of riding we find ourselves a high pasture in which to camp and keep watch over the road. We are camped among pines near the road, which has become little more than a cart track. I’ve gotten to know the others a little better, learning for instance that Aoth left Mulhorand to work as a caravan guard, and that Van was one of Selûne’s Champions, who had only last fall reopened the way to the lost dwarven city of Aerunedar.
I’ve learned that we are agents the Lord Mage Ironcrest of Eveningstar; that he is the impetus behind Van and Aoth’s journey to Arabel, and our journey to Hullack. Tymora’s fortune shall ride beside us.
19th of Ches
At dusk we reached the fringes of Hullack Forest, and made our way into the trees to make camp. Cloaked and crouching, Aoth crept away and fairly vanished into the shadows. We waited astride our horses in the thickening twilight, breathing in brisk white puffs.
Aoth appeared at our side. “Spiders,” he said, “and webs.” He poked a thumb in the direction from which he had sneaked.
We could have moved on, got out of there quick–but we all paused too long. We looked around at each other, questioning, while the moment of leaving crept away, and it seemed to me as if we had all arrived at the same conclusion without speaking a word: we weren’t going to let a few arachnids get between us and our mission.
They came scuttling out of the pines: great hairy black and brown spiders with colorful markings. They struck me as more of a nuisance than a real threat, but our group tactics could use some work. Must remember to work on that with my companions.
Van’s bow, Stonegroan, sent deadly arrows to the eight-legged mark. Lenet and Aoth moved to hack at the spiders with blades, while I summoned a spirit of the earth from a nearby hillside. At the price of a few painful stings, we crushed the spiders in short order.
In the webs, we found a very large cocoon. Driven by morbid curiosity, I suppose, we sliced it free and caused it to burst open. Liquified flesh, bones and a few random coins spilled out the unfortunate creature. Quite repulsive, truthfully. I say creature, because I wasn't sure it was humanoid; the bones were elongated and almost birdlike–perhaps those of a wild elf. A clue…or an omen? Tymora is inscrutable in this. Perhaps tomorrow I will petition more forcefully to know what our fate might hold…
20th of Ches
These woods are unnaturally still. No more bird songs or chattering squirrels. We have seen no deer or bears, no elk or even field mice. I flew up above the canopy of trees to look for landmarks, and thought I spied a wide hill in the distance, an enormous stony horse etched into its grassy slope.
Later we discovered a caravan cart, and the decaying bodies of those who accompanied it. A terrible scene of destruction. We tended to burials and blessings as efficiently as possible, and began a thorough search of the area.
Tracks were few in number, almost nonexistent. It was as though the forest itself had fired the arrows that stuck out of the bodies, one in each, all of them killed with precision. The horses were all gone. In fact, nothing had been taken from the caravan cart but food. The rest of the goods–some of them quite valuable–were untouched. If the wild elves are starving, then their rampage begins to make more sense. But what could anger them enough to bring on slaughters like this one? I don’t understand.
Once we had surveyed the situation, I attempted to divine what action we might take to track down and locate the assailants responsible. Still the Lady gives no answer. We place ourselves in fate’s hands, and trust to the Luck of the Lady. It is all we can do.
21st of Ches
I write this entry with a heavy heart, at the farmhouse of Tarbee, the man who was kind enough to invite us into his home on this dark and miserable night. It was misty and dripping, cold and utterly silent, for the entire journey today. Then things grew worse.
We were surprised to find a halfling sprinting toward us, screaming in terror, “He’s after me! He’s after me! Don’t let him kill me, please!”
An armored horseman thundered into view, flickering like eldritch mist, looming like a black cloud over the Tallfellow’s shoulder. It raised a sword, coming forward much faster than we could reach the poor halfling and save his life. With a choked squeak the small one collapsed under the falling blade.
On it came, the insubstantial and yet all-too-solid horseman. I commanded it, in Tymora’s name, to flee this place and never again return to plague my sight. It was, shall we say, completely unimpressed. Van and Aoth moved to fight the grim visage, but it reared and fled.
I conjured a spirit of fire to cut off escape, and we ran to stop the fleeing highwayman, but he sped away on rapid hoofbeats. The dead halfling lay crumpled in the mud, pockets full of acorns.
Just around the bend we found two more corpses, and a cart filled with empty food sacks. Curiouser still.
I intone a prayer to Our Smiling Lady, humbly requesting a sparrow who could deliver a message to Eveningstar. It took quite a long time, much longer than usual, for the tiny brown bird to arrive. When it did I tied a message to its leg:
Lord Mage Ironcrest,
Terrible events have overtaken Hullack Forest
Famine plagues the land
Please send what relief you can.
Yours truly,
Kaemris Tencoin, Journeyman of the Order of Auspicians
companion to Aoth Spret, Lenet cor Tarak, and Van Dyksun
I will patiently and faithfully await a reply.
From the sound of it, Van Dyksun and Tanasha, the farmer’s malnourished yet ravishing daughter, have finished their dalliance for this evening. Ah…young love. In the midst of misfortune it lives on. I think I will keep the lamp lit tonight; best to be safe in a strange farmhouse. By Tymora’s grace.
22nd of Ches
This morning I spoke to the dead halfling. He could tell me nothing of the horseman or the wild elves that we do not already know. And the acorns in his pocket were only meant to be food. That eliminates entire hierarchies of theories regarding the seeming curse that has fallen over Hullack, driving away wild game and shriveling Tarbee’s crops.
We departed Tarbee’s house early, with the intact caravan carts in tow, headed for the village of Ossington. The weather is still wet and cold, an oppressive mist filling the valleys and groves of the forest.
Along the way we discovered a ring of stones just off the road, which we later learned was called The Chapel. Each of the stones was devoted to a god, nine in all, including Silvanus, Kelemvor, Mielikki, Selûne, and Tymora herself: all the neutral gods of travelers and forests. A woman called Henwen, who has madness shining in her black eyes and wields some sort of necromantic staff, acts as caretaker. We could make little of her mad pronouncements, but I fear we will have to return there at some point.
And now, although I am loathe to do it, I must recount the ambush we suffered at Ossington. The village itself is surrounded by standing stones (ninety-one in an outer circle, standing 30 feet high) and twenty-eight in the inner circle (each 20 feet tall). There are three "trilithons" in the center of the inner circle, each made of two 30-foot-tall uprights with a lintel-stone bridging the dozen or so feet between them. The stones have something carved into them, but we have not yet deciphered the script, to my knowledge.
The village looked a lot like this:
We were met by the starving and pitiful villagers of Ossington. They begged us for food, but we had little to offer. Elder Murdows identified the bodies and the carts we drew into town, and told us more about their misfortune, and their hunger. The villagers were unable to till the soil because of the continuing attacks by elves and the horseman. A local bard called the Cuckoo strummed a few mournful chords on his lute.
About the mysterious horseman: Murdows said that when he first rode into Ossington, he seemed as real as I, and the villagers welcomed him. He was visiting the five ancient ruins of this area (The Chapel (tended by Mad Henwen), the Circles (which surround the village of Ossington), the Secret Keepers, the Old Barrow, and the Red Horse). But when the horseman reappeared, he simply silently and swiftly attacked the surprised townfolk.
It happened so quickly, we hardly knew how to react.
A single arrow buried itself in Elder Murdow’s heart. He collapsed with shocked eyes, and an enormous owl swept into the courtyard, along with other birds, to attack. Villagers and their children screamed and ran pell-mell about the courtyard. With arrows and crossbows we drove off the birds and dispelled the summoned owl, causing a villager held in its claws to fall to his death. A death which weighs heavily with me, since I was more or less the cause.
The Cuckoo finished strumming his lute with a final haunting chord, having spent the entire time inspiring us to greater effort with his song.
There was something very wrong with how we handled the situation; by killing and driving off forest creatures, we may have done irreparable harm to our chances a reaching a diplomatic solution for this clash between wild elves and humans. We will see what develops on that front.
The peasants, who had before been standing in the open, were now cowering in their doorways, their eyes pleading with us from afar for food. We met Dyson and Tully then, a pair of semi-retired adventurers wounded from recent battles with the horseman. They claim that the horseman is allied with the wild elves, who mean to eliminate Ossington.
Something tells me that were we to ask them, the wild elves would claim that Ossington is in league with the horseman, and together they have conspired to chase away all the creatures of the forest. The elves, no doubt, believe they are fighting for their very lives and ancestral home. In short, whatever curse has befallen this forest has caused a tragic misunderstanding between two peoples.
The horseman holds the answer, along with those five places Elder Murdows spoke of. We continue our search tomorrow morning. For now, I must brighten the room with magical torchlight and sleep. We will discover answers to this riddle tomorrow, by Tymora’s grace.
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