Loose threads: The elemental orb, reanimated by Dox's strange brew, escaped. Dox has abandoned his lair and is looking for a new place, not known by Tarka.
Participants: John Doe, Tabor, Melina, Sarah Liu
Locations: Outskirts of the Watcher tribe
Short summary:
We were entreated by Dr. Strangebrew to deliver an orb, seemingly a dormant ice elemental, to Dox as show of good faith from First Landing to the Watcher's Tribe. Traveling towards the watcher's tribe, we were ambushed by elementally infused animals. We learned of the location of Dox's laboratory from Tarka of the Watchers and visited the eccentric Kobold, who informed us we had passed his test. Gave us a strange brew to pour on the orb at a nearby river. The orb was reanimated as a water elemental who nearly killed us, and then escaped.
Full Report
What an eventful arrival mine was to First Landing. Disoriented at first, and running to join on this mission very shortly after my crossing through the portal, I started my career at the Explorers' Guild by arriving late to my first mission's briefing.
Arriving huffing and puffing at the The Blinking Pug , I managed to catch Dr. Strangebrew as he was finishing debriefing for what seemed like a simple delivery mission to a nearby settlement. "Fitting for a newly arrived explorer!" - a too naive Melina thought to herself. Regardless, I made quick acquaintance of my traveling companions. Tabor, a Kashrishi bard, made the initial journey quite pleasant. I learned quite a bit about hand-to-hand exchanges from Sarah Liu and John Doe, each of them experts in martial arts in their respective fields. During the trip I learned about the complicated relationship between First Landing and The Watchers' Tribe.
Our journey continued uneventfully for a few days. Nearing our destination of The Watchers' Tribe, we came upon what seemed like a group of fellow travelers, Kobolds, sitting by the campfire. The group stood in eerie silence so the more physically-able of the group, Sarah and John, went to investigate. There was not much time to take in the scene before we were attacked by creatures emerging from the surrounding trees and right out the very campfire! Fiery otters and icy snakes had, for some reason, setup an ambush and were ready to attack. Through the combined efforts of my companions and I and some accidental discoveries on the interactions between opposing elements, we bested our foes with only minor injuries incurred.
The Kobolds in question turned out to be wooden decoys. Investigating the campfire yielded little other than a note written in draconic, a language that none of us in the group was proficient with. We realized shortly thereafter some rather grave mistakes were made during mission debriefing. The main language spoken by inhabitants of The Watchers' Tribe was Draconic after all, and it only now occurred to us we never really asked the name of who we were supposed to deliver the elemental orb to, or where exactly they lived.
Hoping for the best, we continued on to the tribe. We did our best to communicate with the locals who were at least gracious enough to bear our poor attempts at communicating. Thankfully, this caught the attention of our eventual savior Tarka, a Kobold who I later learned is the Captain of the Guard in the tribe. He spoke common fluently enough to be able to translate the note for us. "It says you passed a test of some type. Who are you here to see again?". It was hard explaining how we didn't know their name, but we managed to explain ourselves well enough for Tarka to figure out we were referring to Dox, an eccentric hermit living in a nearby cave performing experiments to defend the tribe from Serpentfolk incursions.
We thanked Tarka and went to prepare for the trek to Dox's lair, but not before Tarka entrusted us with a message. "Tell Dox he can come back. It is not too late."
Eventually we arrived at the cave that Dox called his home. He welcomed us in draconic in a seemingly affable tone, though quickly realizing none of us understood what he was saying, his mood immediately soured. We presented the orb to him and asked him about the creatures that had attacked on our way here, and why exactly he was testing us. Though he didn't make his motives fully clear, he did explain that there might be other more dangerous tasks to take on and was gauging our ability to deal with such situations. In a rather cruel display of lack of empathy towards animals, Dox showed us what his experiments had been about all this time and briefly, dismissively, explained that he was trying to awaken creatures latent elemental powers, a topic that I am particularly interested in.
Growing tired of my insistence on becoming his apprentice and generally about the myriad of questions the group was asking, the Kobold simply handed us a vial of something to take with us along with the elemental orb to a nearby pond where we were to combine the two and wait for a reaction. We accepted the task and went on our way once more.
It was getting dark when we arrived at the site where we were to perform the experiment but we wanted to put a better foot forward to show Dox the guild's willingness and ability to further his and the tribe's efforts, so we decided to simply prepare our lights and take care of matters before resting for the night. We did as instructed to the best of our ability, with Sarah Liu volunteering to get the orb submerged in the pond's clear water and pour the strange liquid contained in Dox's vial.
For a few agonizing moments, waiting for anything to happen, we considered the possibility that we had done something wrong. John Doe exclaimed that we were told to put the orb near the water and not in it, and that we might have diluted Dox's concoction with the pond's water. Right as we were arguing about whether we had done it right, or if we should come back to ask for more of the substance, John Doe got into the water to grab the orb and take it back to Dox, except apparently the orb had other ideas.
The orb elluded John Doe's every attempt to catch it and it wasn't long before it realized that the water's pull was getting stronger and seemed in synch with the orb's erratic movements. By the time we were able to fully realize we were in trouble, a large water elemental had manifested in the form of a powerful wave bearing an angry, humanoid face.
We fought as we could but it soon became clear that fighting the elemental in its literal element was not a wise combat tactic. Tabor bravely stood to watch for Sarah Liu and John Doeto be able to get out of the water, infusing his powerful drums with subtle magic that kept them going beyond their limits as the two monks used their agility to skirmish with the creature as I tried to strip control of the waters away from it to open the path back to solid ground for my teammates. It was when Tabor was taken down by a single blow of the watery foe that we realized we were outmatched, so we decided to retreat further inland to see if the elemental would chase us, and to take away the creatures otherwise oppressing tactical edge while fighting in water. The elemental, however, did not in fact chase us; it escaped uttering a few words in yet another language none of us could understand.
Feeling defeated but determined to see the mission through, we went back to Dox to report our findings. Dox declared the experiment a partial success, declaring that the elemental orb could be retreated later, and that the knowledge that the substance he gave us definitely worked being more important than the orb itself. We delivered Tarka's message, but Dox was undeterred by it. He explained to us that they could not understand, and that without his work the Serpentfolk would surely outmatch them eventually. Dox informed us he would be moving his experiments to a new location, out of Tarka's watchful gaze, but confirmed completion of our mission and sent us on our way back to First Landing.