- Gogloth is working to spread The Rot. Is he working alone?
- All of the beasts that Gogloth killed have a strange symbol on their foreheads, surrounding a hole through which a spike seems to have been driven.
Our story begins as many stories do — on a quiet day, during a routine mission.
The party — adventurers associated with The Gilded Blade — have just finished escorting Ragrim Gemsplitter, a paranoid dwarf merchant, to a jeweler's convention in the city of Muretsk. A well-paying job, but a mind-numbingly boring one. On their way back to report their success to the guild leader in Ordzina, they decide to take a much needed rest at the White Hart, a cozy country inn just outside of Muretsk.
They are woken from their slumber by eerie howling and the sound of hundreds of hooves approaching the inn. Yevgeniy, the inn's owner, is understandably nervous, and sheepishly asks the adventurers if they would be so kind as to investigate, as adventurers do. The party accepts this new quest, though somewhat reluctantly. Their investigations yield no clues as to what is causing the ghostly stampede, but they at least find the source of the howling: a pack of wolf spirits pacing near the inn door. The wolves are not immediately hostile and Tom, moved by their apparent distress, attempts to communicate with them. He learns that the wolves had only recently been killed by a strange man in the heart of the forest, a man who smelled of death and decay. A man who appeared to be spreading an illness through the forest, and corrupting all of the creatures that he kills.
The wolves warn that their bodies may still be wandering around, and asks the party to put them to rest if by some chance their paths cross.
The party decides to investigate further the coming morning. They follow the road in the direction that the wolf spirits had indicated, hoping to find some sign of the darkness that they had spoken of. They find one in the strange, deformed creatures attacking an isolated hut just off the road. The party deals with the creatures -- once wolves, but overgrown with brambles and fungi -- and speak to the hut’s inhabitant, a druid named Milosz.
Milosz confirms what the wolf spirits had told the party; there is a great rot spreading through the forest, and he fears that one of his fellow druids -- Gogloth -- might be behind it due to the similarity of the fungal variations that Gogloth had once studied and the ones found on the corrupted wolves. He warns the party that Gogloth has in all likelihood subdued the local forest guardian (which he refers to as a leshiy) in order to spread the corruption, and that this is no easy feat; they should be prepared for a difficult fight.
The party takes a moment to rest and patch up their wounds at Milosz's hut, then sets forth to confront Gogloth. From their vantage point on a cliff near Milosz's hut, they are easily able to trace a path to the forest guardian's grove following the rings of dead trees surrounding it. When they arrive at the defiled grove, they find Gogloth preparing to implant the sacred tree at its center with a seed of corruption. He is flanked by what appears to be a treant, though it, like the wolf pack they encountered earlier, is covered in strange fungal growths.
Tom at first tries to negotiate with Gogloth and attempts to appeal to any shred of the druid that he once was, but Gogloth laughs off the farmer's words. Gogloth orders the treant-like creature — which the party quickly realizes is the leshiy that Milosz had told them about — to deal with the party while he continues the ritual to corrupt the sacred tree. It proves a difficult fight, one which nearly claims Tix's life, but the party prevails and manages to stop Gogloth before he completes his ritual. The party tries to get answers out of Gogloth, but the druid is anything but forthcoming about his motivations or his connections. He simply tells the party that they cannot stop The Rot, and those are the last words he utters before the party decides to put an end to his madness.
With Gogloth subdued, the party turns their attention to the leshiy. Tom notices that the fungal growths on its bark-like skin have begun to recede, and after some examination comes to the conclusion that it can still be saved. With some help from the party, the leshiy is able to heal itself, and grants the party a boon in the form of an amulet which grants them a measure of protection from the poison that Gogloth spread. It then sets about repairing the damage that Gogloth had caused, leaving the party to ponder their next move... which will almost certainly involve a hot bath and an actually restful night.