posted by wererat
June 27, 2009, 15:23
Category: Merla's Journal

Sarenith 9, 4709 AR
Abandoned Dwarven Monastery, Darkmoon Wood

We stopped and had an uneventful night in the woods, then continued on early towards the final leg of our quest. In spite of attempts to befriend the elf, I find he is even more prejudiced towards my ethnicity than if I’d been an orc— slipping words like “mutt” and “half-human” into conversations out of pure malice, or perhaps to get a reaction out of me. Still, Keth is aiding an ailing town (although grumbling about that too!) and I will continue to work with him as long as the Goddess wishes me to. The more I think about it, the more I tend to believe the latter anyway. Thankfully Thorab and Liake do not share his intolerant attitude.

I think things are looking up. Or down, as the case may be— we found a male half-elf in a pit on the way to the abandoned dwarven monastery. Biff, as he calls himself, had absolutely no idea how he came to be in this situation. Perhaps it was divine intervention, or, more likely, a lot of ale that brought him to us, but once we got him out of the pit, he agreed to travel with us (I could hear Keth groaning over that). We did have to convince Liake not to put manacles on our new companion though, but I think she just likes the manacles.

We continued on to the west until we noticed the forest was eerily quiet. We soon came to a tree streaked with multi-colored blood, with three dead sprite-like creatures pinned to it, their entrails ripped out and hanging from their torsos. Among comments about fairy blood being used to turn lead to gold, I was about to attempt to at least give the creatures a proper burial (we don’t need undead fairies in the woods, after all!), but Biff, who is obviously quite scholarly, reminded me that this is how some fairies prefer to honor their dead and that they’d likely done this to themselves. To be honest, this didn’t sound right to me, but Thorab thought it best not to disturb the site just in case, so I agreed that we could leave it with just a short prayer.

We left the scene untouched and headed towards the mountains, eventually coming to the foot of the mountain range and the monastery. The entire thing appeared collapsed and crumbling from the front, but we headed into the courtyard, hoping to find the mushrooms we sought quickly so we could return to Falcon’s Hollow. While examining a well, I noticed some skeletal remains of a human. Knowing that every time I stop to perform proper funeral rights delays our return with a cure, I began to just collect the bones for hasty interment, when I found a backpack. I emptied that out to put the bones in, finding a small satchel of gold, a potion that Liake decided to hold onto, some lockpicks, rope and some likely-spoiled rations. It appeared the human himself had been some creature’s meal. As I finished up a small cairn for the bones, my friends discovered a web-filled tower and were busy disturbing the rather largish spider who called it home. Thorab and Biff got close and fought the thing, getting bitten (and poisoned) in the process, but eventually killed the creature. While I healed their wounds, Keth found a rather nice sword in its lair, but no mushrooms.

Still, there was plenty of monastery left to explore. I pushed through one doorway with a light only to see the entire ceiling covered in bats— we quickly shut the door before they all took flight. Another room contained an armory, and though most of the items in it were of no use, we did get four crossbow bolts that are enchanted. Continuing down a hallway, we found a few cells with dwarven skeletons in them. Liake found a magic ring on one, and then noticed two of the mushrooms we needed were lodged in its ribcage. As she plucked them out, three other skeletons became animate and started towards her. Since we were on the other side of the room, we called to her to shut the door to the cell she was in, praying that one didn’t rise as well. This proved useful, as she could easily cast some damaging spells on one without being attacked while I used positive energy from the Goddess to destroy the rest. She managed to get the ring from the remaining dwarf and popped in on her finger before we could give warning— hopefully it’s protective in nature.

Two mushrooms down, five to go….



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