10th of Bloomtide, 1977 FG

Last night my companions and I were the victims of mysterious magics or perhaps a cruel joke.  We all shared a dream of such vivid clarity that we all swore it was real until the moment we awoke.  Even after awakening, bits of the dream remained, the taste of fear in my throat, fresh blood on my axe, and my friend Crespin, near death, with a massive gash in his side and one of Kess's arrows in his eye.

It all started the night before when we camped in a small clearing just off the road about half a day away from the old Sentinel outpost we were traveling to.  It seemed like a normal enough night and we all woke up and moved on the next morning... at least we thought we did.  In reality we were still laying in the clearing, sharing a very lifelike dream.

In the dream we arrived at the town where the old sentinel outpost was, a small city called Bristol.  I remember the name reminding me of old Jim Bristol who had the most vicious chicken I have ever seen.  It was a ratty old skinny thing that hated everyone.  Crespin bought it from him for a few coins and made a pile of lucky coins off the foul beast before they kicked us out of the cockfighting arena.

But aside from the name there was little resemblance to old Jim Bristol.  The town of Bristol turned out to be a fairly nice place.  It had friendly people, good food and it's own ancient haunted sentinel tower.  I remember going there in the dream and having things go terribly wrong.  The ghosts came after Griswold and Crespin started killing them.  I remember the townsfolk got pretty upset about us destroying their tourist attraction but then things get a little hazy.

The next thing I remember from the dream was fighting in a big cave.  There was an enormous bear and a little girl that turned into a really sexy demon that Schmendrick said was called a succubus.  We beat them, but not before the bear had beaten me unconscious and near death.  In the middle of all this Crespin wandered off.  When we finally found him he was having sex with the same girl that he had stolen from me in Phoenix.

As weird as things were getting, I should have probably caught on that this was a dream at this point, but it all seemed to make sense in the dream.  The demon had somehow "bound" him to her with a pair of magic handcuffs (knowing Crespin he probably put them on willingly).  After some discussion, during which, the demon girl tried to seduce several of us, it was decided that we had to cut off Crespin's hands to remove the handcuffs.  As I swung my axe down the demon girl threw herself in front of my blow, and Kess, who had been covering her with his bow, shot her in the eye.

Things went black after that and the next thing I remember was waking up in the clearing with my bloody axe.  Schmendrick brought Crespin back from the brink of death, healing his wounds as best he could, but he said it would take a month or so for the eye to grow back.  Everyone gave Kess a really hard time about that, but I don't think he deserved it.  We all did things in the dream that seemed to make perfect sense at the time but that in retrospect, were stupid or weird.  I hit him too, and nobody gave me crap about it.  In fact, in the dream I hit him really hard.

After patching Crespin up we decided to head down the road and see what the next town was really like.  Strangely, the dream turned out to be eerily accurate.  The town was called Bristol, and it looked almost the same as in our dream, but with little changes.  The tavern had a different name, the old sentinel tower wasn't haunted, and there wasn't big cave with a bear and a demon at the town well.

I did a little bit of research about the old Sentinel tower but it looked like whatever had been there had been long since removed.  While I was out I stopped by a local shop and bought an eye patch for Crespin.  Things had gotten pretty bad between us in Phoenix and I wanted to make a peace offering.  He was grateful for the gift and I suspect he will enjoy using it to play "the dashing rogue" for the next month.

The past day has been the most exhilarating and terrifying day I can remember.  I rescued a damsel in distress, slew a nest of Wyverns, nearly lost a friend, touched the bones of a dragon, and plucked a tooth from its fearsome jaw, saved a town, and ultimately, I think, earned my place as a Sentinel.  I am exhausted and should probably be resting, but amidst the excitement of the day, and the noise of Vance and Schmendrick skinning the enormous red wyvern across the camp, I find myself unable to sleep.

The day began early, when I awoke to the sound of arguing downstairs.  I went to investigate and found a weepy doe-eyed girl and her severely injured brother along with a group of townsfolk.  Her brother had been stung by a wyvern, and was near death.  The cure, I was told, required a venom sac from a mature wyvern, but Phoenix had outlawed the killing of "magical" creatures except in self-defense.  Despite the fact that a pack of wyverns had been preying on the livestock and people of this town for some time, several of the townsfolk didn't think hunting them down qualified as "self defense". 

I personally suspected cowardice on the part of the dissenting townsfolk and I scolded them for it, telling them about the Sentinels who used to sit watch in the tower near the town square.   They were less than impressed with my speech and remained so even after I told them that I was a sentinel and would go hunt the wyverns to save the weepy girl’s brother.

I went upstairs to roust my companions and ask for their help.  Crespin and Kess agreed to help, but Schmendrick was cranky when I woke him up, He listened briefly to my story and grumbled something about not getting enough sleep.  He then got up, walked heavily down the stairs, groggily muttered his way through a healing spell for the poisoned boy and then went back to his room, telling me not to wake him until noon.

I was too excited to go back to bed so I spent the time until noon learning all I could about hunting wyverns.  The book I got from the sentinel house in Old Aerith had a bit of information about them and mentioned using harpoons to prevent an injured wyvern from fleeing.  A quick search of the shops around town turned up three grungy old bronze harpoons hanging form the wall of a fishmonger's shop next to the meager river than ran through town.  I paid the fishmonger's wife far more than they were worth and took them to the local blacksmith shop to be cleaned and mounted to new oak shafts.

By the time noon came around I was back at the inn dressed in my armor with three freshly refurbished harpoons, each with a twenty-yard length of rope attached.  After my companions prepared themselves we hiked away from the city to an outlying farm where we set up an ambush using a few of the farmer's pigs.  We were ready when, less than an hour later, the first wyvern spotted the animals.

Between my harpoon, Kess's arrow, Grisowld's magic and Crespin's blades the first wyvern went down surprisingly quickly.  We had made use of Schmendrick's invisibility powder so the beast never even knew what hit it.  We slew two more in the same manner before a whole group, including the male, showed up.  Schemendrick decided that was a good time for him to teleport us to the nest so we could destroy the eggs there.

There turned out to be a single female left in the nest but, still being invisible, we quickly dispatched her.  We then destroyed the eggs and set up an ambush for the rest of the flock as they returned.  The ensuing fight was quick and brutal.  It was confused by the fact that, using the invisibility powder, my companions and I could not see each other.  I spent most of the fight side by side with Lydia, throwing harpoons at the approaching wyverns while she threw blades at them with deadly accuracy.  We slew five of the females but at the end the male and his two remaining mates fled.  Unbeknownst to us the male took Crespin with him in his claw.

After discovering that Crespin had been taken we harvested the useful parts from the wyverns and made our way out of the mountain through a cave we discovered at the back of the lair.  The caver turned out to lead to a sizeable catacomb carved out of the mountain.  It was the home of a dwarfish man and his long dead master.  The man eventually showed us the way out of the mountain, but not before showing us around his home.

One room contained the ancient bones of an enormous dragon.  I figured a dragon tooth would make a fantastic souvenir so I attempted to pull one of the long teeth from the enormous skull.  The dwarf, smirking at my effort, suggested I hit the skull with my axe.  I did so and was able to open up a small crack above the tooth with a heavy blow.  A few tugs were all that was required to remove the tooth after that.  The dwarf seemed a little dismayed and disappointed at my success, but since he had suggested it I felt no shame in keeping the tooth.

When the dwarf finally showed us to the exit we hiked back to town to discover that the remaining wyvern and his uninjured mate and been dropping rocks and other debris on the town in our absence.  Included among the dropped debris was my friend Crespin, who somehow had managed to survive the fall and had since, been healed by Griswold, who hadn't followed the rest of us to the Wyvern's nest

By this time it was late, but we knew that we couldn't leave the town to the mercy of the remaining wyverns we decided to hunt them down.  Crespin had some idea where they were nesting as one of the females had been injured in the fight at the nest and he had seen her land when the male was carrying him away from the nest.  Schmendrick's familiar, Willey scouted out their makeshift nest and we all headed out to finish the job.  Using Schmendrick's invisibility powder again, and with only one female to back him up, the male went down quickly. 

When the fight was over we all decided to just make camp here at their makeshift nest rather than hike back to town in the middle of the night.  With the pack and all their eggs destroyed, the city should be safe from wyverns again for now.

16th of Lowharvest, 1977 FG

This morning, with the help of the Inn matron I managed to recruit a guide to take us in to Silothreni lands, a small wiry man who goes by the name David.  He’s quiet and doesn’t seem interested in conversation, which is probably for the best considering the nature of our business among the Silothreni.  David didn't ask for any payment and when I asked about it he made some excuse about being headed that direction anyway.  Free is free, so I didn't argue the point. 

We left a bit before mid-day, heading to the nearest large city, a place called Dagonhold.  David says it will take about ten days if the weather stays good.

Well, I finally got caught today.  I’ve been quietly visiting with David over the last few days trying to learn a bit of the local language and customs.  He only speaks a little bit of Celen and I don’t speak any Silwyth, but I’ve been trying to get him to teach me some without the others noticing. Unfortunately, this afternoon, Vance overheard my quiet discussion and figured out what I was doing.

It wasn’t long before most of my companions were ribbing me about “going native”.  I tried to explain that it seemed like a good idea to be well acquainted with the customs and language of these people, but I think they were too busy laughing at my expense to take heed.  Oh well… at least I don’t have to try to be secretive about it anymore.

We arrived at Dagonport today; a sprawling port town nestled into the rocks along the coast of the Inner Sea.    The place was large and fortified enough that at first I thought we had reached Dagonhold, but David says that this is only the merchant center for house Dagon.  Apparently Dagonhold itself is still a hard two days journey up into the mountains.
 
There is so much that is new and different in this city that I scarcely know where to focus my attention.  Enormous ships, floating in the harbor, men riding gryphons through the sky above, merchants from a dozen different lands hawking their wares in a dozen different tongues, orken sailors selling strange wares on the docks next to their curiously rigged ship (they are not nearly so repulsive and barbaric as I had been told), and as an ever-present backdrop to it all, the enormous blue horizon of the Inner Sea.

Even the inn where I sit writing has much to marvel at.  Thoughtful architecture and artfully carved wood and stone abound.  It’s strange to think that a week ago I thought these people to be barbarians, when everything about them, right down to the few snatches of language I have learned, exudes grace and refinement.

We arrived in Dagonhold today after two and a half days of hard uphill travel mingled with bits of foul weather.  We were all in need of a good stiff drink when we finally arrived so we headed straight to a local tavern to rest up before we commenced our business here.  The place was packed as it turns out that there is some sort of local holiday tomorrow called The Festival of Lights.  I wanted to ask David about it, but he, having done his task had faded into the crowd and disappeared, leaving us on our own.

Several of my companions set out to woo some of the local girls in the tavern, which were, in general, smaller, darker and uglier than the women back home in Celen.  Although there were a few exceptions, they tended to have either blue hair, or fragile looking wings, strange realities that I was too tired to ponder.  Being road-weary I didn’t feel like flirting so I just found an empty corner and focused on a mug of the local brew, which, was darker and sweeter than what I was used to in Celen.

It was while I was mulling over the flavor of my ale that I first noticed Crespin talking with a woman on the other side of the common room.  Her Celen-like blonde hair and fair complexion made her stand out from the rest of the women in the place, but what made her particularly noticeable was that while Crespin was animatedly talking with her, she was staring directly over his shoulder… at me.

All thoughts of fatigue fled as I saw the opportunity to repay Crespin in kind for what he had done in Phoenix.  It was wrong, and I knew it.  The honorable thing would be to look away, but even as I thought it, I was levering myself upright and walking over to where Crespin and the woman stood.  I barely had time to introduce myself before the woman, who said her name was Crystal, had taken my arm and excused us both from Crespin’s braggadocio.

What followed was too overt to be called flirting.  Crystal’s clear intent was to seduce me, and I was wholly disinclined to resist.  I learned several interesting things about her that night.  First, she’s older than she looks at first glance, perhaps even twice my age… old enough to have lost any self-consciousness, but not so old that her beauty had faded.  Second, she is the rich widow of a noble, and third, she knows some people who can help my companions and I get an audience with Lord Dagon.

This morning, Crystal got us an audience with Lord Dagon as promised.   There was some tradition and ritual and moving from one garden to another.  We were told to keep the conversation light until we reached the upper garden.  I’ve never been very good at that sort of thing so I just decided to keep quiet until we got to where we could talk freely.

Like most of his people, Lord Dagon is small and lean with dark hair.  Despite being almost my complete opposite in stature, I sensed a kindred spirit in the man from the moment we met.  Perhaps it was that sense that prompted me to be honest with him about our reasons for traveling to his lands.

Lord Dagon, along with a powerful wizard named Sujo, listened intently to our story and when it was finished, gave us permission to continue our investigation in his lands with the accompaniment of one of his trusted officers, who could guide us on any legal or cultural matters.  He was even kind enough to grant us the use of three enchanted amulets that would allow us to speak and understand Silwyth during our stay.

Since it was a local holiday, we decided to wait until tomorrow to start our investigation.  The festivities this evening, aside from the firework display, weren’t all that different from our holidays back in Celen.  There was drink and dancing and other revelry.  It was for the most part quite enjoyable, although I did have to rescue Lydia from an overzealous suitor at one point. 

She is a strange mix of contradictions our Lydia.  She’s good in a fight and can throw a knife better than any man I’ve seen.  I’ve stood side-by-side with her against goblins, undead, and wyverns and she’s never flinched or shied away from battle.  I have no doubt that she’s capable of protecting herself.  Yet she hides her remarkable face behind a mask and the minute some suitor comes calling and things threaten to get physical, she turns all to pudding inside and runs in fear.  I wonder what horrible thing happened to her to make her such a basket case. 

30th of Lowharvest, 1977 FG

We arrived back in Dagonhold last night and met with Lord Dagon and his wizard advisor Sujo again this morning.  They were anxious to hear what we had to say and seemed relieved when we told them that Serena appeared to be an unwitting pawn.    After we concluded our story they told us that Migos had been kidnapped and strongly suggested that we find him.

We searched Migos’s quarters at Dagonhold and it certainly looked like he had been forcefully taken.  The place was ransacked and there was blood on the floor.  Schmendrick and Griswold found a book on dark magic written in a cipher, but nothing else of interest was found.  After some discussion with the group it was decided that Griswold would stay in Dagonhold and study the spells he thought necessary to free Serena from her insanity while the rest of us would go with Vance to track Migos.

Vance has once again proven his worth as a tracker.  For the last four days he has followed an ever-colder trail at a breakneck pace across roads, woodlands, rocks and rivers.  He finally lost the trail this morning, at an ancient stone ruin.  We searched the ruin for any sign of the trail but all we found was a blood drenched room and a handful of fresh undead.  We took our frustration out on the foul creatures and prepared to return to Dagonhold with bad news.

The return trip to Dagonhold took far less time than our outward journey and we arrived back around midday.  Disheartened by our failure to find Migos we were relieved to hear that Griswold had managed to learn the spells he thought he needed to cure Serena in our absence.  We will travel back to Fehr Keep tomorrow so that he can handle the task.

We arrived back at Fehr keep last night.  Since I have little to contribute to Griswold’s magical cure for Serena I have again been spending my time in the company of Allison.  Visiting with her has been very helpful in building my Silwyth vocabulary.

We spent a fair amount of time discussing magic.  With Allison’s encouragement I have been studying a spell from one of the books I bought in Phoenix.  It’s supposed to create a small light in the air in front of me that I can dim, brighten, and move around at will.  She spent some time coaching me on gestures and pronunciation and I think I’m starting to get the hang of it.

My sixth attempt to cast the spell this evening turned out to be the most eventful.  I made the gestures perfectly and was forcing my way through the awkward syllables that accompany the spell.  As I did so I actually saw a light begin to appear in front of me!  Through my concentration I heard Allison gasp in excitement, when suddenly, just as I was certain I would succeed, I felt all the magical energies I had been carefully shaping suddenly extinguished.  Where there had been magic, now there was only nothingness.  Two seconds of stunned silence later, Allison screamed.

Griswold and Schmendrick said it was a side effect of their spells to cure Serena or perhaps a mis-cast (although each of them blamed the mis-cast on the other).  Regardless, the end effect was the complete and utter destruction of all ambient magical energy in a large area around Fehr Keep.  Schmedrick said it would be at least a month before things would be normal again.

This was bad news for Allison who relied on her magic to see in spite of her physical blindness.  However, it was good news for Serena, who was most likely free of any curse and would now be unaffected by any magical device which might be effecting her behavior.

As Griswold and Schmendrick predicted, Serena awoke this morning, sane and ornery.  She was doubtful of our story until Allison confirmed it all to her in long rattle of angry Silwyth that was too fast and complex for me to comprehend.  Once she was convinced of her situation, she wasted not time in working with Griswold and Schmendrick to fix her situation.

We used one of the translation amulets to ask Sujo to come help.  We had suspected that the amulets were being used to spy on our activities and this was confirmed when Sujo actually showed up.  With his help, Griswold and Schmendrick were able to locate and remove a small cursed shard deep within the body of Serena that had been causing her aberrant behavior.

Once Serena had been revived from her surgery she told us that she believed she knew where to find Migos.  There was an old family mausoleum where Migos tended to go when he felt threatened or just needed to get away.  It took a bit of convincing to get her to come with us, but she eventually agreed and used a spell transport us to the mausoleum. 

When we arrived Griswold turned Vance into a gust of air again and he scouted the building.  He returned a few moments later, telling us that he had been spotted and there was one of the dark-skinned fallen inside with Migos.  Since they had some warning we moved quickly to charge the building before they had time to make extensive preparations.

The fight that ensued was quick and brutal.  What Vance saw in his scouting was probably an illusion.  There were a couple demon dogs, and men at arms in addition to the Fallen and a well armed and armored Migos.  We slew the dog, the men and nearly slew Migos, but the Fallen used magic to flee through a solid stone wall.