10 Lacysnows

We’re returning through the mountain passes the way we came.  A party of orcs tried to use our campsite last night but I used a silent image to make the cave we were camping in look like a rock wall.  Our friendly unicorn (whose name’s Mobinda) has been healing the battle damage the fighters took at the tower.  Other than that things have been uneventful.

12 Lacysnows

Back in Marikest.  

The trading boat just arrived today, and it was an interesting sight.  Instead of sails, it uses a pair of iron paddle-wheels to drive it through the water.  After a little discussion, we arranged passage, and we’ll be setting off tomorrow morning.  

Mobinda said goodbye and started off on the long run west to the Forest of Song.  I hope we’ll get to see him again.  Meanwhile, we’re finally heading back to Castle Greyhawk.  

13 Lacysnows

First day on the river!  We’ve all been exploring the decks and watching the scenery drift by as we head south.  

It turns out the ship has a very small crew;  only three plus the captain.  There was a fourth, an elf, but she was killed on the journey here by hobgoblin bandits (who’ll probably still be there tomorrow, which is why the captain was so eager to have us on board).  The reason it can manage with so few people is because the ship’s powered by an iron golem called Barakus, who sits on the lower deck and turns the handles of the wheels.  Apparently he used to guard the treasury in the days of the Old Selinian Empire.  He was damaged in the great war, and was fitted into the boat since his legs no longer worked.  He still quotes poetry sometimes.  I quite like listening to him.  

While the scenery’s pretty, there isn’t much to do, so I’ve been spending my time designing a dress out of the silk we picked up in the mountains, and scribing scrolls.  Marika and Raif are passing the time with some sort of prank competition on each other;  Marika’s told the chef that Raif’s favourite food is mouse heads, while Raif’s been trying to get Marika to polish the ship.  I suppose everyone needs a hobby.  

Another passenger joined us at the last minute;  a druid of some kind with a pet wolf.  He’s been keeping to himself most of the time.  

We’re due to get attacked by hobgoblins tomorrow, and then to reach the locks the same evening.  

13 Lacysnows (Midnight)

Attacked by plants during the night.  Apparently the druid had been carrying a case of rare seeds and didn’t take enough precautions about transporting them.  Marika, Jane, and I all got grabbed and beaten up to various degrees by animated plant tendrils.  We destroyed them and went back to bed.  

14 Lacysnows

Second day on the river.  Reached the spot where we were supposed to be attacked by hobgoblins.  Attacked by hobgoblins.  Killed them all.

We reached the locks at dusk.  Barakus the golem took some light damage in the plant attack last night, so Glowina (the dwarven engineer) has asked us if we can make the trip to the nearby village to get a replacement part.  

Eog, Marika, and I went to the lockkeeper’s hut to see if we could sort out passage early, but he was talking to someone and told us to go away.  We’ll try again tomorrow morning.  

Oh, and Raif’s bugbear baby has now grown overnight to about the size of a 10-year old.  I’m not sure why.  

15 Lacysnows

Long day today.  

We went to see the lockkeeper, Grislop, to discover that he was demanding a 100 gp toll (for passage that’s worth 10 gp, tops).  He was also acting nervous - very nervous - and kept on sneaking glances back at the hut.  It made me suspicious enough that I backed off out of sight, cast invisibility, and circled round to have a closer look at the hut.  

The hut turned out to contain a pair of kobold rogues.  They nearly hit me with a booby trap, but once they revealed themselves all six members of the party piled in and they went down quickly.  We interrogated them and finally started to learn what had been going on.  

The kobolds told us that their tribe had taken over the village that we’d been planning to do our shopping at, and killed all the inhabitants except for one or two.  This turned out to be a lie, but we didn’t find that out until later.  It probably wasn’t the smartest of lies, either, since it made everyone else want to kill them.  Normally I would have objected, but I was so revolted by the way they’d bragged about their kills that I walked out and left the others to deal with them as they decided.  The rest of my party came out a few minutes later.  The kobolds didn’t.  

Grislop had been jumping up and down nervously during the fight, and now told us that the kobolds had been forcing him to help them because they’d kidnapped his wife and were holding her in the village.  (This was also a lie, but again, we didn’t find that out until later.)  We conferred quickly and decided to help.  Before long we were heading towards the village.  

Clearing out the village took a while, but wasn’t actually all that difficult.  The kobolds had scattered themselves throughout the buildings and filled them with traps, but since they were scattered they couldn’t actually work together very well, and we picked them off in small groups.  The only serious threats were the kobold sorcerer leader, Murdock, and a mimic.  Eog and Heinrich hacked the mimic to death and beat Murdock unconscious, after having dealt with his summoned monsters.  

Meanwhile I was getting a close-up view of the kobolds, since I’d come up with the slightly risky plan of using alter self and disguise self and infiltrating them, in the hope that they’d lead me to any surviving villagers.  It actually worked.  I found the one remaining human in the village, the blacksmith, and the others rescued him.  I also learned that that Grislop the lockkeeper was a lying little rat.  There was no wife;  he’d been co-operating with the kobolds voluntarily.  

We’d captured another kobold, their trapmaker and alchemist Biltoka, and between them we finally learnt the truth about what had been happening.  The kobolds had actually been working for a nearby witch, who lived in a place called the Gibbering Caves.  She’d used the kobolds to bring her the villagers, and now that the kobolds had been chased off, we were going to have to go after her if we wanted to rescue them.  Resignedly, we sent the blacksmith and the prisoners back to the ship with Django to escort them, and headed off once again.  

The Gibbering Caves turned out to be a mesa with no easy entrance.  After a little rock-climbing we found our way inside, only to discover that the caves were infested with spiders.  Marika and Jane and Raif promptly vanished, leaving just me, Heinrich, and Eog to battle our way through.  I got bitten, webbed, and nearly set on fire before we managed to clear out the first few chambers.  I used to like spiders, but I think I prefer the little kind to the big kind.  

Before venturing deeper we were caught up by Django, who relayed the news that as soon as we’d left, Grislop and the remaining kobolds had staged an attack and allowed Murdock and Biltoka to escape.  It didn’t improve our mood.  

We pressed onwards, and as we did the theme of the creatures we encountered shifted gradually from “spidery” to “aberration”.  Unfortunately, some of the aberrations had once been villagers.  They attacked us on sight, and there wasn’t much we could do to avoid injuring or killing them.  Eog tried for a while, but eventually he gave up and Heinrich just started kicking them into holes and throwing flasks of alchemist’s fire after them.  Thankfully not all of the villagers had been transformed, and we found the surviving ones shortly afterwards, locked in a set of cages within a nasty-looking laboratory.  

That was the point at which the next wave of creatures attacked.  First were chokers, trying to strangle us.  One of them got me around the neck and it would have gone badly for me if Heinrich hadn’t cut the horrible little thing in half.  Another choker withdrew with Heinrich and Eog in pursuit, and that was when the witch showed herself, along with her pet ice golem.  

The witch turned out to be an oni, an ogre mage.  She tried to disguise herself as a child, but needless to say by this point absolutely none of us were in a trusting mood and her “surprise attack” didn’t come to much.  The ice golem proved a lot more dangerous and almost killed Heinrich before his sword and my flaming sphere turned the thing into shards.  With the chokers and the golem dead, the witch fled.  

It would have been nice if that had been the end of it, but unfortunately it wasn’t.  Django had just started to break the prisoners loose when the witch sent in her next monster, a gibbering mouther.  Heinrich barricaded the door against it but it started to eat the door down.  A column started shouting instructions at us at this point and things got really chaotic.  Heinrich killed the gibbering mouther, it exploded into lots of little gibbering mouthers, Eog discovered the source of the shouting voice, a morningstar inside the column, and made the mistake of picking it up, whereupon it promptly collapsed the roof on us.  

The cave-in wasn’t instant;  we had just enough time to flee.  The villagers still in the cages didn’t.  Heinrich and I started to run and realised that Django and Eog weren’t following;  they were staying behind to break open the remaining cages.  I yelled back and Eog shouted for us to go.  It’s at times like this I really hate being so much weaker than everyone else.  I hesitated for a second but in the end I ran as well.  We made it out.  A bunch of villagers came out after us, then a handful more.  Then the cavern collapsed.  Eog teleported out.  Django didn’t.  

There wasn’t much we could do for Django.  I suppose it’s just possible he might have survived, but with the entire mesa now a giant pile of rubble it doesn’t seem likely and there’s no way we could find him even if there was.  In the meantime the morningstar kept talking – it wouldn’t shut up, actually, even though we seriously considered breaking the thing into lumps of metal.  It told us some contrived story about how the gibbering mouther was a “spawner” and couldn’t be killed but could only be starved to death and how the ancient elven empire had made weapons like it to guard against the things.  I did some divinations and it was telling the truth – more or less – but the sheer stupidity of the damn thing makes me want to not listen to it.  It’s definitely telling the truth about having an overriding drive to kill gibbering mouthers, anyway, as it proved by squishing one of the little ones that Heinrich had brought out with him.   

And finished things off.  We took the few surviving villagers (and I mean REALLY few, only fifteen or so) back to their village.  The blacksmith made us a replacement part (which we’d almost forgotten about by then) and we walked back to the ship.  

16 Lacysnows

Travelling downriver again.  

Eog’s morningstar has been silent ever since it killed that little gibbering mouther.  Its name is supposed to be Makar.  Eog’s refusing to part with it – probably not a good sign.  

Now that the locks are behind us, we’re in safer territory again.  Another few days should see us home.  

18 Lacysnows

We reached Crossriver this morning and finally disembarked, saying our farewells to the captain and his crew.  I’ve gotten quite fond of them, really, though it hasn’t been the easiest of journeys.  I wonder if we’ll see them again?  

We’ve spent the day walking, and now we’re settled for the night in the Halfway Inn along the Old East Road.  It’s been one of the longest and strangest journeys I’ve ever taken, but at last it’s over.  Tomorrow we’ll be back in Castle Greyhawk.