Our work here draws to an end, and although I have been stuck in these wretched ruins for months now, I feel optimistic that we really are coming to some kind of conclusion. These creatures are marvelous in their way of adapting, surviving and thriving. Even though they cannot reproduce themselves, they are elegant in their design and are hard to avoid once they’ve gotten a wiff of you. Truly, a remarkable feet, deserving of recognition. As I write this to you, I am reminded of all you have accomplished, and will accomplish in the future, and my heart is struck with awe and respect, that such a strong individual, such as yourself, may ever read these words I’m writing and feel content with my performance at your mercy. Thank you. One thing which has been worrying me, on the other hand, is the
The friends, although very exhausted after fighting such a mighty foe as a young green dragon, still thought it important to follow the sound of voices as they made their way down the hillside. The voices led them to a house they hadn’t looked through before, where Bree saw undead through one window and those mysterious black cloaked men through the other. Even though they were curious, they decided to wait until morning with their investigation, and headed back to the druid, Reidoth, for a good nights rest. They did make some noise while leaving, however, and even though they tried to blow it off as a “let’s go back to our place and sleep now that we’re not at all suspicious but just killed a dragon”-kind of deal, the black cloaked individuals spotted them and by the time the friends returned the morning after, all houses had been cleared out and not much was left behind. The one two things they found were a small painted picture of a young woman and a half written letter in a journal, addressed to The black spider. At least it wasn’t nothing.
Reidoth left sometime in the early hours, but made sure to point out the location of Cragmaw castle before leaving. This meant the group was now well prepared to leave for Neverwinter wood, a trip that would hopefully take them about two days. Along the way, Eoghan left for Phandalin with both the horses, as they could be tricky to bring through the woods. He wasn’t happy about it, but left anyway.
As they entered the forest, Rurik feeling uneasy for some reason and Bree becoming dizzy from inhaling poisonous spores from carnivorous flowers, they were lucky not to meet any other resistance on the way. After a day’s walk, Cragmaw castle rose in the distance. Rurik was eager to get going but was convinced to stay back for at least five minutes while Bree and Eddie (in the shape of a familiar rat) went to scout ahead.
The large castle entrance was easy to get past, and when there was nothing special to discover in there, everyone else followed. The rat, aka Eddie’s eyes and ears, first skipped into the room on the left and discovered a whole bunch of sleeping goblins in there. It then skipped into the room to the right, only to find even more goblins, and these ones were awake… None of these doors seemed very inviting, so the friends decided to go straight into the castle instead. In their eagerness to press on, however, they set off a trap that collapsed the whole hallway and forced them to choose one of the previous doors anyway, now with goblins on high alert, most probably. Continuing onwards, they did kill some goblins in the sleeping quarters, but after a while they decided that killing goblins wasn’t really something they felt like doing, so they resorted to non lethal violence instead. They went through room after room, found half a letter in one of them but it was written in code and the group didn’t have enough time then and there to crack it.
Eventually they reached the throne room of the castle, after convincing two bugbear guards they were people of authority and were there to speak to King Groll concerning the fall of the Cragmaw hideout and the death of Klarg. The king was not in any way happy to see them. He was sitting on his throne with his big pet wolf by his feet, looking through some important looking papers with a frown. To the side of the room sat a drow woman by the name of Vyerith, keeping a watchful eye at the king, as well as the unconscious dwarf between them. Finally Rurik had found her cousin, Grundren Rockseeker.
In a very smart move, Eddie charmed the king, making him feel very cozy in the presence of the four friends. As they were talking, the drow woman moved toward the throne and Eddie had the brilliant idea of suggesting to the king that the woman was trying to steal his papers. As a matter of fact, this was exactly what she was trying to do and the battle that ensued was not to kill the four friends, but to kill the drow, with help from both the king and his big wolf. She proved an enigma though, until they realized the drow was not a drow at all, but a doppleganger. This became apparent as she turned into the exact likeness of King Groll himself and even though the battle was worrying and trying, eventually she went down, but not without trying to bring Bree down with her. King Groll didn’t even notice that they took all the papers Vyerith had been trying to steal.
After the battle, the group wanted to depart as quickly as possible. They knew the spell would soon run out of time and leave Groll in the complete knowledge of what they’d done to him. With their last bit of time, they convinced the King to hand over Grundren to them, to “take care of him” as it were. The King agreed, especially when he was promised they’d let him know if Gundren gave them any more information. Since he was now very glad of the friends visit, he also told them without a moment’s pause that Vyerith had been sent by The black spider to fetch Gundren, he also insinuated that he was unhappy with how The Black spider had taken him for granted, sending so many people for him to “take care of” over the years. If they could let The spider know that, he’d be grateful. The friends agreed, of course, even though they’d never even spoken to this spider. Very sneaky.
After this, they quickly left the castle by the cleared path they’d already made through the building, out the front gates and off into the woods again, carting Gundren with them on an empty cart they found outside the castle.
A couple of days pass in Phandalin as the friends take some well deserved breaths. Bran spends some quality time with his boyfriend Eoghan, Rurik tries to talk more to her cousin Nundro but the poor dwarf remembers almost nothing from his time as a prisoner of the orc band, Eddie finds some time for contemplation and experimentation with the bloodstones and Bree makes sure she has time to interrogate “Mean eye’d” Joe.
As Bree and Rurik decide to do the good cop-bad cop routine, Joe seems unimpressed, even when slapped in the face. Bree is determined to find out why Joe tried to kill her a year ago, but she also wants the woman dead and is not afraid to follow through on her promise of death. Joe seems reluctant to say much, but eventually reveals she was protecting Glasstaff from Bree, who she believed was out to get him. Glasstaff had apparently started working with someone Joe calls The Black Spider (who the group figured was the same person as “some spider guy”) about a year before the assassination attempt on Bree. At that point, he’d become more focused on his work and locked himself away for longer hours than before, which had caused Bree to show concern for him and what he was doing, something that Joe had found very suspicious for some reason. Since Glasstaff had given Joe the job to protect him from potential harm, seeing as he might not have trusted the Black Spider completely (?), she’d taken this as a sign that she should probably get rid of Bree, as she deemed it apparent that her behavior was suspicious. She also said she’d killed others, for the same reason. After this she refused to tell them anything else, saying Glasstaff was still out there, and that she needed to protect him. When Bree realized she wouldn’t get anything more out of Joe, she refused to let her live a moment longer and stabbed the woman straight through her one good eye, leaving her dead in her cell. RIP Joe.
Joe’s accomplice Gloria, the mage, was left to stew in her cell until the group’s return.
The group, together with Eoghan and two horses, was now to set out on their journey to the ruins of Thundertree. Eddie casually asked that they please be back within 14 days, which the others agree to, and they set out on the three day trek to the ruined village, taking the route through the planes stretching out between Neverwinter wood and the High road. On their journey they stayed at some farms to take shelter from the cold and the beasts and bandits lurking about. One of the families were particularly hospitable as they realized they had a noble man staying at their barn. The group also convinced six goblins to go join the woodcarving goblins over by the old cragmaw hideout. In all, they had quite a pleasant trip.
As the day became evening on the third day, they arrived at Thundertree, only to find it eerily quiet and calm. As they approached the first couple of houses, they spotted a sign on a pole, reading:
“Danger! Monsters ahead!! Turn back!”
Did they turn back? No, no they did not.
The village, abandoned about 30 years previously when smoky quarts crystals had suddenly burst from the ground, quickly followed by undead, was mostly rundown with more than half of the houses without roofs, trees growing inside and crystals glistening in the evening sun. The group approached the first house, one of the better kept ones, only find that someone was still using it as a makeshift home. Could this be the house of the druid Reidoth they were searching for? They decided to leave a note on both the doors, asking if this was him and explaining they needed to speak with him.
Seeing as no one seemed to be about, the group decided to press on, to try and find the man before the dark set in. Making their way up the overgrown path, toward the tower which was resting on the hill in the middle of the village, they suddenly fund themselves entangled… in a web. Two huge spiders attacked them as they were trying to free Bree from the clutches of the net but the group quickly work of them before the spiders could do any real damage. Eoghan destroyed their web and acted as a cheerleader of sorts. Good teamwork.
When they were discussing where they should go now, a man suddenly appeared from behind them, a small, white bearded man. No, not Gandalf. He hurriedly told the group to not be so loud and assured them to come with him without further explanation. “Hey, we’re five on one” Eddie and Bree shrugged and the group decided to come with him. As they approached the cabin they’d visited before, they realized this man must be who they were looking for, especially when he gave them a questioning look as he saw the message they’d left on the door.
Once safely inside, Rurik used her sweetest manners as she threw her arms out to her sides and asked, in a booming voice “Do you happen to be Reidoth the great??”. The man seemed embarrassed by this and mumbled something about “I don’t know about great, but yes”, confirming the friend’s suspicion. He was now wondering what they were doing here, seeing as this was not a common tourist destination. They explained they had heard he might know the location of the Cragmaw castle, and that they needed to go there to save Gundren, Rurik’s cousin. Reidoth was reluctant to point the castle out to them, seeing as he didn’t like sending them to their death and all. He had seen them fight the spiders though, and was impressed by their skill. He proposed a deal. The friends help him deal with the young Green Dragon that had settled down in the tower in the middle of the village, and he’d point out the Cragmaw castle on their map. He also told the group about the bandits “or whatever” that were camping out in the eastern parts of the village. He was worried they’d been causing disturbances and that they might provoke the dragon if they weren’t careful. Maybe they could try do something about those black cloaked people as well?
The friends reluctantly agreed to this and set out that same evening to go and investigate the weird people who’d for some reason set up camp in the outskirts of the village. First they tried for like half an hour to see who was lying on the floor inside a smaller house on the way. Turns out it was two undead and the friends decided to slowly back away after Bree locked both the doors to trap them in there.
They came up with a plan to trick the bandits, or whatever they were, by saying they were of some secret order or dragon worshippers or something to make the bandits maybe help them fight the dragon. It wasn’t really clear if everyone was completely clear about what they were going to say, but they left most of the talking to Rurik as she went to knock the door of the house furthest away from the dragon, where they suspected the people would be. The door was opened by a man who seemed very distracted by Rurik’s many hand gestures and didn’t want to tell them much, even though he was partially convinced to believe them. When Rurik slipped up, calling the friends a cult, instead of an order, the man quickly said he’d wake their leader up and have them talk to him instead. He closed the door on them and they heard a muffled conversation, where only the line “Why can’t you just please tell them to go away??” was heard clearly. A while later, the leader showed up. He wasn’t very happy about being woken up and tried to make the friends leave, saying he didn’t believe their lies. Eddie and Bran then tried to convince him that no, they weren’t a part of a dragon cult, but that instead they were a research team, or something and that they wanted to share information with other researchers…. Scientists? The man seemed reluctant to divulge too much, saying his work was top secret, but he did tell them they were studying the undead, their behavior in the wild, how they were affected by their surroundings and if they could multiply their numbers somehow. When Bree asked him about the Black Spider, however, he grew cold and almost angry, asking how they knew that name and saying he had nothing more to say to them. He didn’t want to hurt them, but it was best they leave.
The friends then had no choice but to face the dragon, unaided.
Really, you would think a dragon would be hard to beat, but for some reason, this dragon wasn’t having a good day. Maybe he was too young and inexperienced to deal with four feisty, but tired, companions, or maybe it was a stroke of fate that allowed the group to kill it before it managed to properly kill any of them. Even though Eddie fell unconscious to the ground once and Bree was bloodied, they were quickly saved by Rurik’s healing magic and Bree proceeded to climb the dragon’s scaly body as she stabbed it repeatedly, killing it. Very cool.
It was a tired group of friends that found loot in the dragon’s lair, in the tower room. A tired group of friends that were happy to still be alive to tell the tale.
