An untamed frontier. Dark cults. Fickle fey gods. Ravenous fiends. Nothing black powder and sorcery won't fix... . Timberlands Campaign Diary
After freeing Inniscrone from the scourge of flying weapons, the heroes decided to stay for a few days in the town. They watched as the common people who survived came out of their homes and cellars, started to clean up the mess and try to get back to some semblance of a normal life. Thankfully, a greater population of the town lived than previously expected. Edvan Reeve, the owner of the Broken Bough Inn and a former adventurer, let the heroes stay at the inn for free.
Their ally, the tax collector Wren Holdfast, thanked the party once more for their services. She reiterated her plan to travel to the Grim-Faced Bridge and deliver the conman responsible for all this carnage, Gerwald Knapp, to the proper authorities. Once there, she pledged to talk to the paladin Ser Silvercrown and convince him to come back to Inniscrone. The paladin would be able to verify the heroes’ testimony against Inniscrone’s Lord Mayor, Levinia Greye, and hopefully depose her. As it would take a couple of weeks to travel there and back, Wren said she’d send a message along via the colonies’ blink dog network when she was on her way back to meet back up with the champions at the Convent of Quite Grace in Hillsbrook Valley.
No sooner had the heroes bid the tax collector farewell than Knox, the town sheriff, came calling. He delivered the promised reward from Lord Mayor Greye for liberating Inniscrone. He also passed along Levinia’s well wishes and hopes that they would enjoy the rest of their stay in the city before moving on. The heroes accepted the cash with false pleasantries and promised to call on the sheriff if they needed anything. Knox departed with false pleasantries of his own.
From there, the party got down to some deep discussion over ale and cheese. After they nearly came to blows over Cindermane, Wild the tabaxi ranger wanted to clear the air. The fey-touched archer set out some rules so people would not talk over one another, and everyone agreed to follow them. Peregrine, the half-orc warlock explained his issues with Cindermane. He explained in greater detail how his pact weapon had been made by the waning court smith, forged from a living entity – a celestial – and how that didn’t sit well with him at all; especially with how blithe Cindermane was about the act when confronted. Wild too, put forth that Cindermane was more sinister in the end than the beginning and hoped they’d not made a mistake aiding the sinister craftsman. Aelric, the satyr blood hunter was asked to share his perspective. As one might expect, the taciturn fighter grunted, stated he’d said his piece, and ordered another ale.
Sykes the eladrin rogue went next. Her companions were mystified by her attempt to find both goodness in Cindermane and even more so with Gerwald Knapp. She explained that while she didn’t recall much of her past, she knew she’d been an assassin and all signs pointed to her being a heartless villain who cared only about coin, no matter the harm she caused. Sykes felt the best way to atone for her past was to try and foster forgiveness in others and give them a chance to do better. If she didn’t, well, didn’t she deserve to be put to the blade right now? After some philosophical back and forth on the nature of guilt, with Riley the changeling dervish chiming in with their rhetorical skills, the party decided to let the matter lie for now, but to do better at communicating in the future. Ea, the agriothier wizard was just happy to be there.
Deciding to kill a few days, the party relaxed and worked on restocking their supplies. Wilds felt he was in dire need of some equipment upgrades, and sought on the Hob Mobs still in the smithy to get them down. The rest of the party tagged along. They negotiated that half of the hobs would stay behind in the blacksmithy to keep the business going and that the heroes in turn would stay hush about the wee folks’ participation in the previous slaughter. The other half of the hobs made a deal to obtain the magical box of sentient tools, hobs end, from the heroes in exchange for the group of fey craftsmen traveling to the Convent of Quiet Grace and serving the needs of the people there. Hobs end readily agreed to the deal. So, as the heroes departed Inniscrone a few days later with better armaments, the hob mob headed south to fulfill their part of the bargain. Before they left, though, Sykes slipped a love letter to them wee fey to deliver to Arvantel, the elf runesmith the party had left at the Convent of Quiet Grace.
The party traveled under a red star, the First Leaf of Autumn, which marked the official turn of seasons. The weather followed suit as it become chilled and dreary. By the next evening they had to travel under thunderheads, but at least found the roadhouses along the way were intact and thriving despite the events plaguing the villages in the area. The party caught snippets of rumors about the surrounding territory from a pack of displacer beasts hunting to the north near the Moonkiss Mountains to a new Empire of Enuk’Lun era keep found in the dense woods to the south. They also had confirmed rumors that Direflies, some said to be the size of horses, had been spotted near Tichner Fork.
After three days of rain, the party drew closer to the riverside down as the road wove through the crumbling foundations of an Enuk’Lun ruin. Part of the road and the ruins had fallen into fresh sinkholes and the heroes, ever curious, investigated. It wasn’t long before the ground vibrated on its own before a pair of hungry bulettes burst from the earth. One of the landsharks flattened the party’s ally, the goblin healer Niq Brownfeet while the other chased Ea as the bearfolk tried to scramble onto an intact wall.
Wild sank a shaft into the eye of the bulette mauling Niq only to have the massive predator leap through the air and smash into him. As Ea misty stepped away from his doom, Aelric, Riley and Skyles laid into it. Peregrine backed up Wild from a covered position, sticking that landshark with bolts. Wild used his own misty step to get away and the combined fire brought one of the bulettes crashing down. The other took some work, its thick hide warding off all but the best-aimed blows of the three heroes and even deflecting some of Ea’s spells. In the end though, it lay dead at the bloodied heroes’ feet. The group butchered both animals. Aelric knew bulette meat was highly prized and that their armor could be fashioned into wearable pieces. They were traveling to Tichner Folk to recruit a render, a crafter of animal parts into magical items, after all.
Not long after, the party entered the outskirts of Tichner Fork. Located where the Tichner River split into smaller branches, the town wasn’t much to speak of. On the high western bank sat an inn, the Smuggler’s Boots and on the other side a small tower. Between a network of claptrap buildings and docks crisscrossed the river. Tichner Fork was the domain of rough frontier-folk and independent trappers. Brawls were common and justice often came at the end of a knife.
The party found the inn’s doors barred with instructions to knock after nightfall. They did so and were greeted by a gruff wood elf on the other side. The elf, Fael Redfeather, asked them invasive questions about who they were, where they’d come from, what they wanted. Then he asked them to prick their palms before he’d unlock the door. As they did so with confusion, Fael studied them. Satisfied that they weren’t a problem, the elf let them in.
The tavern floor of the inn was fairly busy with mustel, otterfolk, scampering about filling orders. The innkeeper, Osswac Blackpaw greeted them and apologized for the fuss. Fael went back to playing dice with his boss, a local tough paid by Osswac to keep the peace, the wood elf Centra the Scar. Centra chattered with a bit while Osswac and his staff worked on getting rooms ready for the heroes. She explained that the town had been having some troubles the last two moons. First, there were the damn strange bugs buzzing downstream that carried madness-inducing whispers and emitted a red-light; direflies. Chunks of bloody-looking honeycombs had started floating by on the river over the last few days and befouled the water near them.
Second, folks had been going berserk in town. While fights and even stabbings weren’t uncommon, feuds were going too far and the methods used were often brutal and gory. Some folks had even bitten and clawed one another up. It all seemed to start with a blood-crazed furrier, Critz Pelter, who killed some random folks in town before running off into the eastern woods. He’d been spotted a few times out there, and some of his rivals hadn’t come in from the woods despite it being the season to hunker down. Anyone who experienced this blood madness and didn’t get caught had fled off into the same stretch of woods too. She explained that the town sheriff, an otterfolk named Monl Strant, had led a group out to look for Critz and the others two days ago, but no one’s heard hide nor hair of them.
With that, she invited the heroes to play dice with her and others. Aelric got an ale and took her up on the offer. He listened as on of the other players, a mustel named Ponth, speculated that the blood rage was some sort of spiritual illness. There were some old, strange ruins out in the woods that Critz haunted, likely remnants of the Empire of Enuk’Lun. Ponth, a minor cleric, could sense something unholy in the air. Centra joked that the otterfolk must have just eaten some bad mollusks.
Sykes settled in to speak with an older human fellow at the bar who wore a fine set of half-plate and was feeding scraps of meat to an owl perched nearby. The man introduced himself as Irveen Barkbender, a retired adventurer that was now the valet and trainer for a noble scion, Henrich Eaglespur. They were just at the tail end of a hunting trip and were planning to travel back to the central colonies as the weather turned, but he’d been sidelined while Henrich went out in search of some legendarily-racked elk nearby. He figured the young man was fine, hopefully, even if he’d yet to return. Worried that Irveen and Henrich might be connected to the The Lodgemaster (Sessions 6-8), Sykes made some subtle and then not so subtle references to the lodge they discovered and cleared out. Irveen didn’t seem to know what she was talking about.
The other heroes were just happy to be out of the rain and cold. However, their respite didn’t last much longer. The driving rain returned with a vengeance and a howling wind battered the building. Worse yet, it seemed to carry cackling and half-intelligible words; the names of those gathered in the tavern! As dread took hold, the hearth and lanterns dimmed and the wood of the mostly stone building groaned. As the lights extinguished altogether, humanoids pulled themselves from the wood of rafter, windowsills, and doorframes. The horrors were made of wood and bark twisted with writhing faces (reskinned Scarecrows), their hollow eye sockets glowing with fell-light…
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