Participants: Deanne, Nasha, Onyx, and Roy
Locations: Avis River Delta
Our party was transported to the Avis River via a barge, piloted by a kindly grippli. We easily arrived at our destination, Shatterstorm Ranch, where we met the owner and rancher, Aerlow Wavetamer, an azarketi who breeds and trains River Drakes for a living. In recent months though, someone or something has been killing his drakes one-by-one, with the Rancher finding their half-eaten corpses far from the ranch, where the drakes should never go without his order. Aerlow also has a daughter, Esabylla, who swears she hears the voices of both her parents in the night despite her mother, Shavellyn Wavetamer, being away on trips to the village for quite some time. Aerlow dismisses his daughter's claims, but our group found it rather suspicious.
With our mission clear, we headed out into the swamp to find the mystery killer, but it wasn't long before we instead ran into two badly injured drakes. Casting Speak With Animals, Nasha was able to discover that the drakes were lured away from the ranch by something that mimicked Aerlow's voice then badly injured and left for dead. Our group tried to convince the drakes to return to the ranch with them, but one of the agitated drakes attacked us instead, requiring us to beat it unconscious. After the fight, Deanne discovers a journel entry written by Shavellyn, stained in blood, along with an axe stained in black blood. While Onyx feared the worst might've happened to Shavellyn, we decided to return the drakes to the ranch before anything else could happen to them.
Returning to the swamp, Deanne is given a vision by her goddess, Pharasma, warning of three sites Aerlow had previously spoke of: a Cave where someone was about to die, a Cove where a corpse laid unburied, and an Old Hut where an abomination lived. Heading to the cave immediately, we hear Shavellyn's screams for help coming from within. It quickly turns out to be a trap, however, as a beast known as a Leucrotta was mimicking her voice as the real Shavellyn laid unconscious and dying. The fight within was intense, but Roy was able to kill the Leucrotta with his scythe while Deanne summoned a Psychopomp to heal Shavellyn. We all survived the fight, even Shavellyn despite having lost her left arm and right leg to the beast's sadistic torture. Too injured to continue on, we all rested in the cave until Shavellyn began to regain consciousness in the morning.
We once again returned to the ranch, this time returning Shavellyn, much to the happiness and horror of Aerlow who had no idea what his wife was going through. While there, Roy revealed to the Wavetamer couple that he has an alternate personality, known as Purpose, who hides underneath Roy's hood and is a skilled inventor. Roy tells them that Purpose could build prosthetic limbs to help Shavellyn in her time of need but that he would demand an unknown payment in exchange. Despite everyone being taken aback by this, the couple considered his offer and asked for time before giving an answer. Wishing to give the couple some space, the party moved to investigate the Old Hut, where they found a River Drake and a Crocodile, both heavily mutated by means unknown, who attacked them. After quite a fight, it was ultimately Onyx and her fists that dealt the finishing blows to both creatures, and then found a secret cellar under the Hut containing booze, valuables, and a map pointing towards another cache somewhere in the Silent Forest.
Finally, we moved on to the Cove, where the skeleton of a minotaur warrior laid in a damaged boat. While Deanne urged caution, everyone else (especially Onyx) rushed into the cove, angering a Giant Crab and a Hermit Crab Swarm. Onyx fought the Giant Crab, who ultimately fled back into the water, while the swarm clashed with everyone else before being killed by a Cassian, summoned by Deanne, that froze all the little crabs with its eye beams. As the party licked its wounds, they bonded over sharing stories of each other's childhoods, before then giving the minotaur skeleton a proper burial. With the swamp showing signs of itself returning to normal now, we returned to the ranch a final time to meet with a happy Aerlow, who informed the group that they would be declining Roy/Purpose's offer to help Shavellyn. Instead, both Shavellyn and Esabylla would be moving to First Landing for the foreseeable future, where Shavellyn can get the treatment she needs and Esabylla can get an education in more than just ranching.