So, leaving the rescued hostages safely behind, we go ahead to explore the natural cave area we had found earlier. There was no light in these damp caves, so we had to light a lantern to illuminate our way. We enter in a large natural chamber, it's walls filled with moss and small crawling insects. Only a few moments after we arrive, we start hearing noises coming from around a corner in the cave. Chuck goes to investigate and finds that a lot of Giant Rats were coming our way, possibly atracted by the prospect of fresh adventurer meat.
Most of the rats focus on Chuck, but it becomes obvious pretty fast that they were not very threatening. In fact, with Chuck's Cleaves and Sora's Dragonbreath, we manage to kill a whole bunch of them, before some sort of gelatinous creature which none of us could recognize shows up. The creature starts beating up Sora, putting her in critical condition. Meanwhile, there were still a lot of rats around us, and we were missing more than our usual share of attacks. I, for once, wasn't hitting anything... Sora, after being healed, focuses on the jelly, while myself, Ceteribus and Chuck focus on getting rid of the rats. Kralho, suspicious of the gelatinous creature, takes away Sora's sling and bullets and starts hitting it from a distance. When the rats had already been killed, and after taking quite the beating the creature splits into two, which scared us quite a bit. However, when split, it seemed to grow weaker and we finally managed to kill it, despite it doing quite a number on Sora, who could take no more battles that day. We investigate the surrounding area but couldn't find anything worth our while.
So, with Sora injured and most of our resources spent, we decide to head back to town to rest and take the rescued hostages to safety. We arrive in Winterhaven in the middle of the afternoon and go to see the Lord intending to update him on our progress. It turned out that the hostages were not from Winterhaven, but he would be glad to assist them as he could. He was not convinced however by my attempt to extract from him some compensation for the money we had spent in saving them... He was also not very happy that we had left the Goblins go, but hey, a deal is a deal.
Anyway, and since we were the first to return from the Keep in ages, he asked if we had found any precious artefacts he could buy. Apparently he was a collector of sorts. We show him some of the stuff we had found, and he seemed most interested in the mirror we had found at the dig site where Doven was held. We found that somewhat suspicious and so we refused to sell it. Also, if Kalarel was looking for it, it could still be of use in preventing the rift from reopening. We leave the Lord and go off to the towns merchants to sell some of the loot we had found. Meanwhile, Chuck goes around town searching for the former innkeeper Salvanna. He finds her living with her husband at his parent's home and manages to talk with her alone, attempting to solicit a second sexual encounter. She refuses however, saying that she had already paid what was due.
When the night comes, we go to the lodgings the Lord had assigned to us to get some rest. Strange things were about to happen though... In the middle of the night, whilst sleeping, Sora wakes up to the sound of someone opening her bedroom's door. She immediately prepares herself for an attack, and when the door is opened, a black clad female figure comes in, with obvious hostile intents. Sora leaps out of the bed in anger, intimidating the assailant so much that she ran away immediately, leaving behind a pink bow, commonly seen in women's dresses. After dressing up, Sora defiantly attaches the pink bow to her armor in an attempt to cause a reaction from the culprit if they crossed paths, and goes forth to warn the others. Before she leaves though, she notices her bedroom had been marked with a red cross.
Meanwhile, across town, Chuck also receives a late visitor. Salvanna shows up in his room. He immediately believes she has reconsidered his offer, but all she wanted was to give him a small bottle with a magical substance which would help us with our quest. He takes it, but rembembering Rebecca's warning, decides not to drink it, for now. He then insists for her to come in and do the deed... Scared by his lustful demeanor, she rans away.
After Sora manages to get us all together, as we were sleeping some distance apart from each other, we realize that the only one who had been attacked and whose bedroom had been marked, had been her's. This was definitely most curious, because Sora was the one responsible for keeping the party's treasure. It seemed obvious that whoever had attempted to attack her knew this, and had done so with the intention of robbing us. We agreed that it was probably a member of Kalarel's cult, attempting to steal the mirror from us. From that moment on, we would definitely not sleep separated anymore, even if we had to sleep out in the streets. It was also curious that this happened after the Lord had attempted to buy the mirror from us...
We leave town still in the dark of night, attempting to make the most of our time, and head back towards the Keep. By now Kalarel and his denizens must have realized that the Goblins had been defeated, so we were expecting some sort of surprise when we returned. Check out what we found in the next installment of Adventure Logs.
No comments:
Post a Comment