No matter where you go, there you are.
Dearest Grun,
It’s been a few days since I’ve had anything to write to you about! Being home is nice, and the carnival in town entertaining, but not much else had been going on. Fafnir shut himself up in his house, making new potions, and Aramil shut himself up at Fafnir’s to memorize new spells. The smells and strange noises made a very effective Do Not Disturb sign!
Drusilia threw herself back into chapel duties, Valon polished his stories, and “Pockets” was out drinking and talking with the carnies.. which is just as well; if he’d been home much I’m not sure if Father would have resisted nailing the guest bedroom door shut “by mistake.” And where was I, Grun? Sad to say, I seem to have caught a bug of some kind, and spent a lot of time in bed!
How embarrassing! I hated to admit I’d gotten sick when the rest were just fine, so I planned to just sleep it off, but of course eventually someone started banging on the bedroom door. I threw something at it in return, but they wouldn’t go away. I admitted I wasn’t feeling well, and they still wouldn’t go away! So I finally opened the door, and the elves got all freaked out by how I looked. I told them I was ill! Drusilia cast some spell at me, and I immediately felt a lot better. “Pockets” wanted to get drunk and go to the carnival, so off we went!
About sundown, a mother came into the bar looking for her child. Drusilia felt like we had to do something, and “Pockets” was either friendly drunk or determined to impress her, so off we all went to search the riverbank where the kid was last seen. Oddly, I could see his footprints right down to the bank, and where he sat down, but no sign he’d left, or anyone else’s prints - but his pole and buckets sat there alone! “Pockets” quickly got bored and left, but Drusilia decided to go to the nearest bar and offer a ten gold piece reward to find the boy, which emptied the bar and half the town pretty fast! No one had any luck, however, and finally the next day dawned.
Drusilia decided to brave Fafnir’s door for incense to do a divination spell with. Luckily, all he did was growl at us for interrupting him, and Drusilia got her answer - “look to the earth.” Thinking of the tunnels from the old mansion, and how we’d followed at least one right under the town, we headed back to the riverbank so I could look for some sign of a hole. No luck, but while we were there we heard a scream, and off we ran!
One of the neighbors was crying that the basement had eaten her husband, so as Drusilia tried to calm her down I went for my urgrosh. We entered the house and went down the stairs, looking for the wall that had come alive, reached arms out, and snatched the man into it. I could see the earth had been disturbed, and there was blood at the base of the steps, but nothing else was there! I picked at the wall, but it was solid. A creature that swims through the earth? We went back upstairs and asked the assembled for ideas - if anyone had heard of such a creature stalking the town before, and how to possibly lure it out? We didn’t have much luck.
I wondered if the boy had been taken too - and both times, they were pretty much alone, so I tried to warn people to stay inside, and I geared up and walked around the town. I was hoping that if I was the only movement it might lure the creature to attack me, but I had no luck there, either. Drusilia showed up and said we should ask the druids, but they weren’t any help.. we were running out of ideas! I wondered if Fafnir’s trick of making things invisible might help, so we went off to bother Fafnir some more.
This time, we didn’t have to wake anyone up out of creative trances - Fafnir was mutterung about his chickens being stolen, and Aramil was talking with Valon about a toad that had shown up and wouldn’t leave him alone. It wasn’t just a trick of his tired brain, either - the toad jumped around on Valon’s head, and onto my hand, when I held it out. Not usual toad behavior! All this time, we were also talking to Fafnir about the thing in the ground (I checked his coop, and told him that I didn’t think his chickens were stolen - the ground was disturbed in the same way as the cellar wall!). In the middle of that, Drusilia cast a spell that allowed her to talk to the toad - and it turned out to be “pockets,” who we hadn’t seen since the night before! He wouldn’t tell us much about what had happened, which didn’t surprise me, and we were about to go buy some more chickens from a local farmer to use as lures, when we heard the constables’ whistles, and we were all off running again!
The creature had attacked again, this time burrowing through stone walls under the tavern, and had killed the poor serving girl as she came downstairs. It hadn’t dragged her away this time, so Drusilia cast a spell to ask her spirit what had happened, while Fafnir tried making the area invisible that the creature had burrowed through. No luck from either source - the ground was solid, and the poor serving girl had been grabbed from behind. “Pockets” landed on my shoudler, looking a bit mournful, so we left the mystery of the creature for a moment in order to go ask the carnies for directions to an elderly lady with a bird (one of the few things he’d mentioned to Drusilia before she made the mistake of asking him why the woman would do such a thing.).
Zorlla the fortune teller actually helped us in more ways than one - she finally did turn “Pockets” back into an elf, and she gave us some ideas about the creature! Using her crystal ball, she told me that it had settled in under the center of town, making many tunnels, and lives to feed. Luckily, light will hurt it, so we have both an idea of where it is, and how to fight it! While “Pockets” took off, muttering something about Aramil, the others asked the fortune teller their own questions.. Drusilia wanted to know the way to the Temple of the Void (that’s where we have to destroy our evil artifacts), which was a good idea but discouraging answer. The peaks of the Hell Furnace mountains are far away, and we only have two weeks to get there? Maybe we’ll visit you, Grun, and pay for a teleport!
I’m writing this from home, getting ready for bed - we’ve split up to get some rest and mull this over. (I’m so not going into the scene we found at Fafnir’s place after we left the gypsy’s tent. No, I am not. My eyes are burning. I don’t understand elves, even halfies! Drusilia is the exception to everything you’ve ever heard!).
Obviously, we must kill the creature first. After that, we’ll be off to our next adventure!
With love,
Ghelt
Of course I would be wrong. Our stay in town was restful for about half the day. I had gone to trade stories with the performers in the carnival, and was just getting to enjoy myself, then I heard people all over the place yelling “Timone.” When I inquired, I was told that Carla Durpin’s son had gone missing, and Drusilia Silverwood was offering 10 gold pieces for the person who could find him. I’ll have to remind Drusilia that 10 gold pieces is a heck of a lot of money for a normal person.
Not long after Drusilia and Ghelt found me and we headed off in search of the boy.
While we were searching we heard a scream, which we ran to. We found a woman (I was told her name was Mrs. Pasten) screaming about the basement eating her husband. We went into the basement, and found a pool of blood, but no Mr. Pasten. The walls didn’t even look like they had been disturbed. Ghelt did notice some minor disturbance, however. Thank goodness for Dwarves. We headed out of town to talk to the Druids, who were aware of the creature, and also willing to help, though they didn’t have any additional information.
We went to Fafnir’s House to see if he had any idea how to deal with the monster, but we only found more mystery. Aramil had apparently found a new familiar, with a toad that would not leave him alone. Drusilia cast a spell that allowed her to speak with the toad, and we found that the toad was Pockets! He had been turned to a toad by an old woman at the Carnival. I am sure it was for good reason.
About then we heard the guard alert whistle, and knowing that something was going on we headed towrds the tavern, where the whistle was comming from. A servant girl had been killed by our monster. Drusilia attemted to speak with her through a spell, but did not recieve any new information.
We then traveled to the carnival, hoping to get Pockets returned to his Elven self, and maybe getting more information. We found an old fortune teller, Zorlla, and convinced her to return Pockets to normal. Pockets took off nearly as soon as he had been transformed back, though I guess I can’t blame him.
Ghelt asked Zorlla abvout the monster beneath the town, and Zorlla looked in her crystal ball and began to tell us what she saw.
A creature seldom seen passes through earth as we do through air. Beneath Smallville are tunnels throughout, with its lair in the center. Its sole purpose is to feed. Light is its enemy, and light prevents it from attacking.
Drusilia seemed impressed and asked about the Temple of the Void. Zorlla’s reply was just as cryptic:
Shrouded in mists... many entrances... not all open at the same time. The next entrance will be to the south, at the highest peak in the Hellfurnaces, in 14 days.
Then out of curiosity, Drusilia asked about her own fortune. I can only describe the reply as grim:
You will be the bringer of destruction to the world. Darkness will spread from your wake. Choose well when the time comes.
We returned to Fafnir’s to find Arimil and Pockets in a heap on the floor. Fingers told Fafnir that they must have been doing some strange mating ritual. Fafnir asked if I knew anythng about it, but fortunately, I did not.