Familiar

Uktar 23, 1373 DR, road between Thornhold and Pommeville

Lord Taricz had gone to the trouble of providing Widget and me a nice little war pony, so we decided to do our best to stay on it. I was not the only gnome in the war party: there is another Rock Gnome from the Heartlands who goes by Falrinn Blackrock. He’s a ranger that has never been to Lantan, and is probably the least talkative gnome I’ve ever met, preferring instead to scout ahead of the party. The lack of conversation was more than made up for by another companion: Respin is a bard from Waterdeep; I wanted to ask this half elf if he’d met Maiyr before, even though Waterdeep is a huge city, but Maiyr was clearly avoiding the bard so I let the matter drop. A cleric of Helm called Melark has been providing healing as needed to our group; a divine spellcaster is a welcome addition to this party seeing that we are headed into zombie territory. In addition to the Lord and his Lady Deirdre, we are also accompanied by a sorcerous dwarf called Dagnal. Widget tells me that Dagnal has a toad with her, but didn’t seem inclined to talk with the creature.

In fact, Widget seems to be talking a lot himself. I’ve finally started to understand what he is saying, I mean, actual speech, as opposed to the combination of gestures and empathy we’ve used since he was just weaned as a ratling. He still squeaks a lot of what he’s saying, but it sounds more like Common to me, with a very thick rodent accent.

So, when Widget said, “there are two boats in that tree,” I had to stop to make sure I’d heard him correctly. Sure enough, we’d come to the same spot where we’d spent the night over an ankheg’s hunting ground, though now an additional boat was perched beside the first. We didn’t have time to ponder that though, as the gnomish scout came back to let us know there were at least forty assorted gnolls and undead headed our way from the road to Pommeville.

I’m not sure why, but Darvin and Nosila needed to double check what Falrinn saw. They hightailed back with an updated count of fifty shambling and yipping things on the way— skeletons, gnolls, skeletal gnolls, dire rats, zombies— and one of those had been an ogre in life. As the evil creatures came into view, I tried to slow things down by making the illusion of a gaping crevasse traversing the roadway (Widget helped by taking the reins of the pony). It worked, but the army continued forward, splitting in half as it navigated around the imagined pit.

Our new comrades cut through the undead with fireballs and other devastating spells. Once the monstrous horde had passed the illusion, I dropped it and I concentrated on slowing down the gnolls that were now surrounding an unconscious Maiyr, and then moved on to help finish off the reanimated ogre that was threatening Darvin. It’s a good thing I didn’t see how badly Nosila was injured, as she was on the opposite side of the fight and I would have been distracted (though I know Widget was keeping an eye on her). Once the last monster fell, Widget hurried over to Maiyr and rummaged in his pack to find a healing salve. It was enough to get the elf conscious again. Melark healed everyone that needed it, though we were sorry to see that three of our own men-at-arms did not survive the encounter.