Loose threads: Hecret calls the "Artist" is still loose and free out there, A plot by the unsealed Goddess Monday that is transforming everything into some twisted form of itself.
Participants: Zinlynndise Imare, Reiko Amiri, Ariana Yaxiri, Hecret, Gharok
Locations: The Shorepines
Short summary:
- Party met with Vum Gliss
to get the details of the quest, and was served tea and biscuits while
they waited. Hecret was in handcuffs. The operating belief was that the
moose was an undead creature, per the The Roof, The Roof is on... report.
- Ari teleports them to the western side of The Shorepines. There they found the forest a twisted landscape under the effects of a divination magic. The party was unable to identify the source of the twisting, but it seems to use terrain and weather to mislead travel through.
- Party opted to camp so lynn can prepare spells meant to counter the effects of the twisting somewhat so lynn can navigate through better. During the night half a dozen moose attacked.
- The moose were clearly not undead, but rather identified to be foul transformed amalgamations of moose in perpetual pain, seeking an expedient death at the party's hands. They could speak a broken form of Aklo.
- Hecret & Reiko & Ari had a secret meeting in a disintegrated underground pit. Lynn and Gharok were not invited.
- In the morning they found the weather in the forest frequently transforming from one hellish landscape to another. First it was a fiery torrent, then a weaving jungle of flesh tearing vines.
- party transverses the vines by slowly burning it down. They encounter a voice in the forest calling out for help, and diverted to investigate. Found a Arboreal Archivist being stung and chewed apart by transformed wasps, similar to the moose. The wasps were cleared in a difficult swarm encounter.
- The arboreal suffered from a difference of time perspectives, with changes happening in hours rather than decades. It requested the party find its other arboreals in the forest, who went missing after investigating a strange pond to the south east.
- The party flew over a fiery inferno when the weather transformed.
- The party arrived at the pond to find several arboreals bewitched and fascinated by the strange waters - some strange corruption of the moons reflection. Just glancing at it seems to threaten the same fascination, as the party discovered when Hecret got bewitched. Running on that theory, everyone took steps to drag away the arboreals without staring at the pond themselves.
- The arboreals rescued with the use of MULE and gharok's muscles, they thanked the party and granted a few boons before cleansing the forest of the corruption.
Disclosure by Zinlynndise Imare:
This adventure ended up dealing strongly with what I believe are the forces and gods behind the taint and the broken Moon. Whatever is going on with that is getting more active, so best be wary.Divine Intervention this quest report deals with the breaking of the moon.
Full Report by Zinlynndise Imare
(Wildsong): Friend Druid Speaker
Hello, Zinlynndise here again. Another report. And this one was...well I suppose it was a doozey? I can see Hecret is writing something as well but I actually tried to take notes when we set up camp this time so I'm just gonna make that effort worth it! But yes, doozey of an adventure.
So whole thing started when I was glancing over adventures that came up previously, just looking for any odds and ends that were left unexplored or abandoned by other explorers of the guild. That's when I noticed a telling of strange 'undead' moose in the Shorepines, chasing away explorers who were visiting the The Unseen Village. Needless to say, that seemed like an appropriate problem for a senior veteran to address, as well as a chance to correct an unnatural balance of void energies in the forests of the island.
The team was gathered, from Gharok to Reiko and Ari. Hecret also joined up, but it was in handcuffs for breaking the Moon. Trust me, that's not the last strange thing Hecret gets up to on this adventure. But yes, we all assembled in the guild house to speak with Vum, who showered us with tea and biscuits with sugar and all sorts of treats as she told us what to expect about this whole moose incident.
Spoilers - wait am I allowed to spoil a report? Nah, sure I can. Spoilers - the guild information on all this was WAAAAY wrong. We all thought it might be one or two moose, of undead nature - but that turned out to be wrong. Vum had explained that the moose had 'skulls on its body' and 'tiny arm hands', which I guess fit an undead motif, but it was more a twisted beast in the end.
Oh right, we were served by this cute little robot. Felt that was important to mention.
Anyways, we figured we'd make a short hike over the plains and hills to reach The Shorepines. Only to like, surprise surprise, remember we have a dragon whose really good with some arcane magic. So Ari just flew up really high, studied where we needed to go, and used that familiarity to just teleport us there point blank range right on the western borders of The Shorepines. Like, woah. Arcane magic can just feel really cheatey some times.
But them Shorepines were not in any reasonable way natural or healthy when we arrived. We saw the forest seemingly impossibly dense, like a labyrinth that obstructs your vision rather than just being a sprouting of plants at random. The barks and branches, they didn't grow for the sun, they just grew in unhealthy directions. Even if it made them sickly and blighted - and the rocks and the ferns and vines and leaves all seem twisted. And it wasn't still either, like ink dispersing in a pool of water or clouds traveling across a windy sky - you just blink and its all different. It was creepy, almost nauseating to watch. Oh, and it was a snowy blizzard too, but that felt like the most normal thing to happen on a tropical island.
So naturally we spent the next 10 minutes trying to identify what exactly we were seeing. Detect magic said its a divination effect, and I tried searching my head if this was some really screwed up druidic ritual. Neither me nor Reiko could figure it out. Which was kinda nerve wracking, cus we're both like, experts and masters of knowledge of stuff and natural stuff. The only theories I had was its the illusions the The Unseen Village has to keep it, well, unseen, but this was radically hostile for illusions like that. And the divination aura, well, I imagine that's like a ritual meant to detect and thwart intruders? Considering the way the forest seemed to twist and change to hide itself from us, felt on point.
Anyways, we all agreed that the druid (hi, that's me) whose best at tracking should take a night to prepare some different spells to take a crack at navigating in this forest. Reiko put up her comfy cabin spell (the comfiest), we set up watches and bedrolls, and snoozed the night. Then the moose attacked. Lots of moose. Meese? Mooses? Well, the freakish 'undead' abominations we thought they were either way, so they had to go before they ate us.
Individually they were rather weak, especially to fire, but there was like, a little more than a half a dozen of them. 6? 7ish? Its hard to tell, but they're terrifying in numbers. Like monsters out of some campfire horror story, their flesh was all flayed with humanoid skulls embedded in their heads, they had no eyes, really wicked antlers, and little skinny human arms dangling from their chests. It was gross, ick, ew, bad. And they could shout really really loud, even loud enough to stun or demoralize you for a moment.
We spent the entire fight debating why they looked undead, but every blow and every smell and every observation said otherwise. I didn't risk blasting vitality spells in the area, because that'd heal them just as much as it'd heal us. Since they just weren't undead. They spoke even, though it was like, pained words in Aklo about being in pain. What they spoke and how they acted were two different things, so don't fall for any pity when their instincts are whats dangerous. Instincts...I suppose it can be called that? Something was compelling them to kill us.
When the moose were slain, we had a moment to catch our breath. I guess the question was on everyone's mind: "was that it? We killed the moose, mission complete?". I thought it...but I came here expecting one rogue undead moose. If it was just one, it'd probably be a fancy coincidence, some evil necromancer having a tee hee ha ha. But its was 6 or 7! (they turned to ash and dust upon dying, i don't remember what the final count was. Sorry). 6 or 7 isn't an accident, its a conspiracy! And with the whole wrongness of the forest, yeah I wasn't going to let this go. I announced plans to pursue this problem in the morning.
And Hecret over here was like 'yeah, bad idea, everything's fine, let go back, explore some other place, haha'. Despite the forest next to us being like...on fire and a blizzard at the same time. Yeah, no he's being weird and evasive. I saw it, Reiko saw it, Gharok saw it. Ari I think was a dragon at the time. It was supposedly all just a performance, him looking at the broken moon with his weird reflective sword and him talking to one of the moose (not meese) in common. Its like he was in on this prank, but its far from a prank.
So then Hecret decided to confess...only to Reiko. And Reiko brought only Ari. Leaving me and Gharok to kinda...I dunno, stand around feeling like silly dummies? Like, Ari disintegrated a whole chunk of the ground so they could chat without being seen or heard from us. DISINTEGRATED THE GROUND. ARI?! WHY?
Sorry. I just remembered she did that and needed to scribble something really frantically.
...
Okay...I just had a breather. Apparently Hecrets writing absolute nonsense. Yup. I give up. Hecret's no longer what I'd call a "trustworthy, good person". I'll write that in the loose threads section.
...
Okay, anyways, next morning, forest was on fire. I prepared spells to deal with that - it stopped being on fire and turned into a dense razor sharp flesh tearing vine maze. Which is kinda frustrating, but Ari and Reiko doubled up and burned a path through the thorns so we could make progress. We figured we'd have to head into the deeper parts of the forest, to try and find the source of all this corruption. But then we heard a voice speaking Sylvan pleading for help from the pain, and decided to risk it being a trap and go investigate.
It wasn't a trap, but an Arboreal Archivist, a warden of the forest who documents the changes it goes through over decades and centuries. And it was hurt, incapacitated as swarms of bees and wasps bite into its bark and hide. Oh it was so miserable - but I was really glad it wasn't a trap. We all agreed that we needed to get the bees away but like...we had no clue how to do that. So Ari just set them on fire.
Fun fact: bees are really fast and really evasive. They just dodged her fireball and swarmed us. And SWARMS SUCK. It was bitey stingey poisony pain and we didn't have room to run because of the vines. Ooowwwwwww. We got through them but like...do not kick any wasp nests, okay? You heard it from me, do not recommend.
Anyways, the tree we rescued turned out to be an Arboreal, which are guardians and shepherds of the forests and a friend of nature. It was injured and miserable from its bug bites, but it seemed to be on the mend - what it really needed was its companions and community of other arboreals. Apparently they went missing when they went to confront some strange 'pool' of water. So we set out on a rescue mission after patching up.
Thing of note for the journey was that the weather changed again, turning into a fiery inferno that was going to fry us alive. We solved that problem by just flying over it until we reached the pool. Most of us had one way or another to doing that with magic.
We arrive at the pool, at first it seemed like sanctuary from all the weather transformation going around us; an eye in the storm against blizzards and forest fires. But then we noticed all the other dozens or so arboreals, all standing still fascinated by the pool of water. And right above them was this abstract weird celestial looking terror thing - we never really figured out what it was. Right away we knew not to look - I've almost been petrified by gorgons from day one to know that lesson. Except Hecret apparently, who was still flying in the air staring dumfounded by this pool. Even Quillam, his familiar, got scared.
Having come to rescue the Arboreals, we tricked up some ropes onto each one of them and simply pulled them back until every tree broke the connection to the pool. It was a bit challenging, because the trees tried rooting themselves to the ground, but with Gharok's muscle we pulled hard enough to break even that. Thankful for the aid, the Arboreals gifted us a boon before setting about reversing all the strange transformations that's going on.
We had a small chat about what to do with the pool - to drain it or leave it be for the Arboreals to dispose of. Apparently its made of some fake water stuff, shimmering silver like moon light. Hecret talked all about how change is a good thing and this pool provided that. But knowing what I know from the taint, that seems like a bad way to get involved with that. With nothing more we felt we could do - the forest had returned to normal - we called it a good day and went back home.
As for all of what Hecret wrote, well, I'll let you be the judge of who's telling the truth and whose trying to be glib.
Full Report by Hecret
Hellooo Hecret here. Writing a report of my daring exploits once more.
Vum Gliss summon Hecret Zinlynndise Imare Ariana Yaxiri Reiko Amiri Gharok to explore the terrible terrible sighting of accursed undead MOOse. After some chatting and robot biscuits the party was off by a lovely spell casted by Ari. Did you know I think Reiko and Ari are a thing now? GOSSIP! I didn't know, I wonder when that happened. Anyway the robot biscuits were alright. I feel like robots don't have a soul so can they really bake? Perhaps. Also Vum Gliss was very nice, freed me AHERM I me was very nice. I like her a lot compared to most stick in the muds the guild has.
Oh yes, the spell. We were carried away by a lovely teleport spell right to the Shorpines, which seemed like everyday normal Shorepines. Nothing really out of the ordinary. Trees, shores, and pines. Thats it. Nothing else. Anyway we decided to bunker down for the night and Reiko casted the very Lovely spell Cozy Cabin and created a nice 2 bedroom cabin in the middle of the world. It was just lovely, lots of knick-knacks and chairs and beds,
As I was going to bed, unfortunately, there was a CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH. I thought it was Father Mistmas, here to deliver presents but alas it was hell mooses. abmoosemations. The meese. The meeple. Really weird and strange things that changed somehow and wanted to make us dinner? I don't know why they attacked us to be honest. Maybe we mortals are the strange ones and we were invading their territory.
Anyway, after some Moosder and Moose combat, the group was victorious. The group was like: "lets go exploring," and I was like, "HONK," and admittedly, that's not a good argument. HONK, and HONK, and such afterward, I had a nice heart-to-heart with Reiko and Ari about their doubts about being a clown. In confidence told me they wanted to be clowns but were afraid society would judge them if they put on clown paint. I assured them that being a clown is now accepted in First Landing and in most of the world and agreed that they would put on a performance in full clown regalia as soon as they returned, and they promised to give all the proceeds to the First Landing Orphanage. They are truly swell those two.
Anyway, we kept exploring the pines, and it rained, and as we continued, we came across tree people! Abeoreals! And as it turns out, you can roll underneath most monsters but you can roll through thickets of thorns. Going to keep a lesson about that. After defeating some nasty bees, we went through the totally normal shorepines, that were changing a little bit, like there was little fire or something, down this lovely pond that totally entranced some more aberoreals. This pond is highly recommended and I suggest you are in the area to check it out. It is a gorgeous pond, truly breathtaking as it had totally entranced several tree people.
A local flying serpentine considers who calls himself "The Artist" said everyone should come on down and check it out. And if the tree people say "No its cursed" don't listen to them, they just want to keep the pool to themselves. I highly recommend you go check out the pool on your own, and sneak by any tree people. I personally checked it out and it changed my life! Take the whole family!
Anyway the party had to drag the tree people from the pool it was so cool. After that they said they board it up so nobody else could see it. Which is why I recommend you check it out before that happens!
Lynn did a bunch of nature stuff, love that gal and Gharok was truly great orc. Overall it was a very fun adventure.
In closing, sometimes change is for the best. People are forever unhappy if they remain static in their lives. Old orders set in stone before you are even born are hardly orders one should follow.