Participants: Trozhen Dawnlight, Tellestra, Vric Poxclaw, Rasbis Grumpledin
Locations: Millennium Forest, Liar's Garden, Gozreh's Scar
Loose ends: the ruins of a shrine to Gozreh; the rest of the coast remains largely unexplored; the Hag's former presence
Short summary:
A group of Guild adventurers went south to explore the coast of the Watchers' Island. On their way there, they were attacked by giant spiders, and then they encountered a lovely-looking cottage in the woods, straight out of a fairy tale, inhabited by the "Granny". This, of course, turned out to be a magical disguise, but they killed the Hag who was dwelling here and perpetuating the illusion. Eventually, they reached the coast, and found an abandoned shrine to Gozreh. They named this area Gozreh's Scar and returned to First Landing.
Full report: Trozhen
The handwriting on this document is a bit messy, as if written in one go, with some words scratched out every now and then.
I hope this report will be satisfactory.
There was an attempt at exploring the coast south of First Landing. The expedition party was formed of myself, Trozhen Dawnlight, Champion of the Dawnflower; Vric Poxclaw , a Ratfolk poison expert; Tellestra, a Unknown Cleric of Arshea and Mother Vulture; and Rasbis Grumpledin, a Wizard of Gnomish ancestry.
Our first day of travel was pretty boring. We made some small talk, got to know each other, you know how it is. You have to find out whether you can trust your fellow adventurers to watch your back, and talking is the best way to do that. We managed to reach the borders of the Millennium Forest by sundown, and we decided to set up camp and venture in the forest during the day. It was a wise decision, in retrospect. The further you go in, the thicker the forest gets. At one point Tellestra had to cast a Light spell on her shield for us to keep going.
Anyhow, the second day nothing of interest happened. The forest was not a friendly-looking place, and it didn’t really inspire much conversation. At one point we feared an ambush: the animals had gone exceedingly quiet. Vric scouted ahead while the rest of us proceeded more slowly, but in the end nothing came of it.
That night, I took first watch, and never once took my hand off of my scimitar. Nothing came of it, however. I assume Vric’s turn passed on without incident, but Tellestra’s did not. Almost at dawn, we were ambushed by three giant spiders, and she just barely managed to wake us up before they started attacking us.
Their web is very resistant. It is necessary to damage them with a weapon or a spell to get rid of them, and their venom is pretty nasty as well. I managed to resist its effect only by the grace of the Everlight.
We managed to dispatch the spiders, eventually, and licked our wounds until dawnbreak.
On our third day of travel through the Millennium Forest, we found ourselves surrounded by a thick mist. I’ve seen some thick fog in my time as a pirate sailor, but this was the thickest I’ve ever seen in my life: not even Tellestra’s Light magic was able to help. Luckily for us nothing assaulted the group while we were in the fog, and eventually we reached a clearing with a lovely-looking cottage in the middle, straight up out of a fairy tale: rosebush topiaries, white-picket fence, cobblestone path leading up to the door. The cottage was inhabited by what appeared to be a lovely old woman, who invited us in her home to eat and rest for a while, insisting we call her “Granny”.
Maybe it was some sort of magic, maybe we were just tired and weary from being woken up in the middle of the night, but we accepted. We ate the cookies this “Granny” had prepared for us… and then, when we felt the poison in them, we realized that we had been tricked. Pretty stupid of us.
“Granny”, actually a Unknown, attacked us alongside her magically-animated wheelchair. It was not an easy fight: at one point Tellestra went down, unconscious, and roses started blooming out of her body. I was fast enough to get to her side and call upon the grace of the Dawnflower to bring her back from the brink of death.
In the end, Rasbis managed to hit her with some sort of electric spell and kill her, at which point the illusions she had cast on the cottage faded away, leaving us in the ruins of what might have once been a home, and that the cookies we had eaten… it makes my stomach lurch even thinking about it now… were the rotting carcasses of small animals. It took three bottles of mead to take the taste off of my mouth.
The garden, curiously, had remained the same. After a quick investigation, Tellestra realized the truth: those were the corpses of those killed by the Hag, transformed by her magic into rosebush topiaries bearing their likeness, and had intended to do the same to us. After paying our respects, we decided to dub the place Liar's Garden, and continued on.
Unfortunately Tellestra left us early, returning to the Old World, so we only continued on for a short while before recalling back to First Landing; with me being the only healer, it would have been unwise to continue on.
But we did manage to get out of the Millennium Forest the following day, and see the coast south of First Landing. It is a beautiful place; the terrain is rocky, and its cliffs reach high up above the wine-dark sea, and there is no land near the coast.
The first landmark of note that we saw once out of the forest was a shrine of Gozreh, eroded by the passage of time. I paid my respects to the Winds and the Waves, and I wish I could have done more to tend to the shrine, but the rest of my companions were eager to return to First Landing… and so we did, but not before dubbing the coast Gozreh's Scar, for the harsh, steep cliffside and the shrine we found.
The following has been scratched out, but it is still legible.
I intend to explore the coast more thoroughly. It has been so long since I’ve been close to the sea, and I had never even realized it had been eating me up. I love the Dawnflower’s light, but I’ve always been a wanderer at heart, and the sea sings to me a siren’s song that I cannot help but follow.