Eylf it is your third morning since leaving the comforts of The Commons to make your way south to Kindermarsh Village. You took ID's advice, marching to Waewood in the east, using the main road but then going into the wild south, along foot paths not often used and feeling more like wilderness than civilization, or at least to you since hours and now days have gone by without meeting another sentient soul.
You followed the treeline on your left as instructed, and so met a few wilderland critters--birds, mostly, but some other beasts that took no interest in you. Even as you rested for lunch on first day, in the shade of some trees, you noticed silence the depth of which you had not experienced in a long time, if ever.
OOG How do you think Eylf would react in a very quiet wilderness like this? Does she guess why it might be so quiet?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
GM & Wild Envisioner for the Kingdom of the Four Gospels
GM for Waterdeep Dragon Heist
Playing:
Kethra Moonraven / Human socialite and occasional Sorceress if you piss her off in Sri Raji, the Barovia of the jungle
Eylf it is your third morning since leaving the comforts of The Commons to make your way south to Kindermarsh Village. You took ID's advice, marching to Waewood in the east, using the main road but then going into the wild south, along foot paths not often used and feeling more like wilderness than civilization, or at least to you since hours and now days have gone by without meeting another sentient soul.
You followed the treeline on your left as instructed, and so met a few wilderland critters--birds, mostly, but some other beasts that took no interest in you. Even as you rested for lunch on first day, in the shade of some trees, you noticed silence the depth of which you had not experienced in a long time, if ever.
OOG How do you think Eylf would react in a very quiet wilderness like this? Does she guess why it might be so quiet?
Nature: 9
Eylf cocked her head as she scanned the area.
It was quiet.....why would birds stop singing? Hiding? Maybe? But from what?
She got to her feet a rumbling growl unbidden in her chest, she quelled it immediately then let it continue...it made people avoid her, but there were no people here. Places without people were strange, but she didn't not like it.
You reflect on your journey so far. After a night in Waewood, you continued to march on throughout most of the second day, watching the sun--massive and hot in the sky--cross the sky from east, where the trees are, to west, where the mountains are. As it set it cast an orange light into the forest, illuminating the first few dozen feet of trees, but casting the remainder into dark brown that was both pretty, but also kind of unsettling because really, anything could have been there, waiting. You realized that this feeling was the feeling of utter aloneness--of being tiny in a wide limitless expanse of nature. And even now, in the sunshine at breakfast, you feel it now--not something you're used to, or enjoy.
Every now and again, you've been pulling out ID's note to make sure you haven't missed a step but each time you put it back, feeling vaguely unsatisfied. Now that the excitement of going out on a mission from ID has settled, a seed of uncertainty has been growing in your mind, one you can't quite put your finger on.
To be fair: it could have been the exhaustion talking. Walking from sun-up to sunset for two days has tested your physical limits in the same way that being alone for two days has tested your mental limits. Bleary eyed, you decided to take advantage of the last dregs of sunlight to read ID's note again and pull it out for what felt like the millionth time:
Eylf: I worry the party won't make it in the wild so I will need you to go join them and help them carry out the mission. It is essential to bring me back what I have asked. The party will know what I'm talking about.
Travel to Waewood and then take the footpaths south along the treeline until you reach the lake at Kindermarsh. If they are successful you will find them there, or in the village.
Tell no one of this.
ID
You put the note away--too exhausted to find meaning in words you've read a million times by now.
Please roll a survival check to see how your first attempt to camp out last night (as I am assuming you spent your first night on this journey at an inn in Waewood and not in the wild like this).
OOG Woops, edited post #3 a bit because I got your current placement confused with last night's narrative. Sorry about that! and hope it isn't too confusing but just in case, the note was read on the evening of the second night, and it is now your third morning. Your survival check of 15 is resolved as follows:
Turns out that making a fire was easy, and eating rations is even easier. Being exhausted to your very bones made sleeping the easiest thing in the world, and if anything visited you that night, you were none the wiser. If anything, it's been too quiet.
But not something you need to worry about now, with a 4. You return to the present and scan the way forward. If things go as planned, you should make it to the northeast side of that lake ID mentioned. And then....what? Meet the party? Just kind of walk up and say HEY PALS, ITS ME, EYLF, REMEMBER FROM THE ACADEMY? No no, that won't do. You decide to give it a think as you walk.
After a very quiet breakfast of rations, I guess, you pack up and continue the familiar footpath as sun makes it familiar ascent over the left side of the sky. By the time it is at its highest peak, you have already started to see trees on the other side of the path. At first they are sparse, small and dry--more like shrubs really. But eventually they grow tall, and cluster, and the ground underfoot starts to feel a little more soil like (as opposed to so much packed dirt.) It smells so different here! Like...what exactly? Not sure.
Time passes a little more quickly now that the landscape is changing and eventually, just as you expected, you find yourself at a large body of water. It is pretty rugged by the shore, with lots of debris from the woods surrounding, and thick ribbons of watery plants laying dead on the banks. The sand is fine and dark, and the water itself looks dark as well.
***
How does Eylf feel about large bodies of water? The Commons (where they are all from) has a beach community that a lot of the kids would often go to--is this something she would do? Would she take part with friends? Or is this sort of foreign to her?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
GM & Wild Envisioner for the Kingdom of the Four Gospels
GM for Waterdeep Dragon Heist
Playing:
Kethra Moonraven / Human socialite and occasional Sorceress if you piss her off in Sri Raji, the Barovia of the jungle
Eylf emerged from the scrub and surveyed the lake, she had often observed the other students at play and leisure at the beachside but crowds were not really a place she felt comfortable, though she had slipped down at night to rest in the dark waters....
Something she could never explain called her to dark places and darker waters, she dug her toes into the black sand and breathed in deep...the smell of tannin and wet vegetation somehow calming her.
There wasn't far to go now, she had a little time...she slipped off her travelling cloak and slid into the dark waters...something at the back of her mind told her to dive deep and let the black waters fill her lungs while she rested in the deep......but she could not breath water no mater how much her instincts told her she could....
She rested in the shallows, cooling her scales for an hour then dressed and continued on her journey...
When Eylf clambers back up to the bank after an hour she realizes that she's not quite sure which direction Kindermarsh Village is from here. In fact, it occurs to her that it was never made clear what to do once she got to the lake. The Village is on the north side of the lake she thought but maybe she's come a little too far south. A bubble of frustration comes up from deep within her as she assesses the landscape. Why wouldn't ID tell her about this? Why would he be so opaque?
Unless this was a test. Just like at the Academy, all of the practicum. Days upon days working through riddles, in small rooms, in large dungeons, in classrooms like bags of beholding, containing cities within them.
Ok, so maybe this was a test. She just had to be resourceful, keep her head on. Find the village, find the group.
She has two options then: go left (keeping the shoreline on her right) or go right (keeping the shoreline on her left).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
GM & Wild Envisioner for the Kingdom of the Four Gospels
GM for Waterdeep Dragon Heist
Playing:
Kethra Moonraven / Human socialite and occasional Sorceress if you piss her off in Sri Raji, the Barovia of the jungle
Fair-I'd have you roll but this is something the dice can't help Eylf with. She wasn't exactly set up for success here.
***
Eylf decides to follow the foot path with the lake to her right. It takes her close to the shoreline for some time, but then climbs up a bit of a bank so the lake is below, spread out like a wide blue sheet--it looks so clear from up here, and less muddy somehow, though the shoreline remains clogged with leaves and roots and bark and dirt and such. To her left, mostly fields in tidy little parcels--obviously farm country. She might very well be trespassing as she walks along but at this point she'd love a sign that she's walking in the right direction so she plods on, often looking into the fields for houses or pathways or any evidence of people but finding none.
After a few hours, she is certain she's gone in the wrong direction--surely she would have come across signs of a village by now, even a small one. But the thought of doubling back today after such a long march already gives her pause. Instead, she starts to wonder what might happen if she looked for a friendly farmer to feed her something other than rations. What would they say of a dragonborn at the door?
OOC you have 3 options that I can think of, but by all means don't be limited by my imagination:
1-Turn back and head in the direction you think the village might be in (you can roll an intelligence check of some kind to recall maps or geography or whatever you think might be helpful to support this)
2- Keep going south, again with an intelligence check to recall what might be at the south end of the lake)
3- Go up into the fields to your left to see if you can find a farmer or a main road or something
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
GM & Wild Envisioner for the Kingdom of the Four Gospels
GM for Waterdeep Dragon Heist
Playing:
Kethra Moonraven / Human socialite and occasional Sorceress if you piss her off in Sri Raji, the Barovia of the jungle
Eylf is tempted to just swim directly across the lake to cut the time from retracing her steps but no matter what her instincts tell her she is not overly confident that she could swim all that way without issue.
After several minutes pondering she determines to just keep heading the way she is and hoping for the best......it hasn't hurt too much so far....
She thinks that The Sallows are near the southern end of the lake, but she can't recall the significance of them. (And to be honest, given the way she was told about the mission, I'm not sure she would ever have known that the mold is actually nearer the southern edge of the lake, though she may have heard it around the school, or around town as rumours are now starting to form).
In the meantime, she continues following along the lake side, which is growing more and more swampy the further south she goes. The tidy little parcels of land have given way to untouched wilderness, reminiscent of the northern forest border she followed to get here, but soggy and lean and darker somehow. The trees are different: fewer coniferous trees and more long gangly trees, like willows, but with dark knotted trunks and branches that seem to drip as opposed to sway. Also: flies. Midges, mosquitoes, black flies--all manner of little buzzing black biting annoying things. As a dragonborn I'd say Eylf is likely immune to most of these but the incessant buzzing around her head has got to be a pain.
It is around dinner time when she realizes that she's been walking in a sort of a boggy woodland for some time and that in fact, she appears to be in a the middle of some sort of forest. And then, just as she is trying to remember any maps she might have seen before, she hears a screech of some kind. It's wild sounding, and loud, and feels like the call of something wounded. It sounds to be about 30 feet away.
How does Eylf react to this unknown wail? Would her inclination be to bolt directly to its source, or to investigate, or something in between?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
GM & Wild Envisioner for the Kingdom of the Four Gospels
GM for Waterdeep Dragon Heist
Playing:
Kethra Moonraven / Human socialite and occasional Sorceress if you piss her off in Sri Raji, the Barovia of the jungle
The ground a few paces in front of you is...smoking.
You take a step and lean down to take a closer look and indeed, there is a sort of vein of blackened, sludgy earth that is emitting very gentle plumes of smoke, as though it's being eaten by some sort of acid (or is some sort of acid?) It makes no sound, but it smells like a wet burning, if that could be a thing. It's not altogether unpleasant but it seems very wrong. And as you stand you see you see that in fact, it's all around you--this area is rife with it as far as your eye can see, these black veins against the otherwise greenish brown of the boggy forest floor.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
GM & Wild Envisioner for the Kingdom of the Four Gospels
GM for Waterdeep Dragon Heist
Playing:
Kethra Moonraven / Human socialite and occasional Sorceress if you piss her off in Sri Raji, the Barovia of the jungle
Eylf it is your third morning since leaving the comforts of The Commons to make your way south to Kindermarsh Village. You took ID's advice, marching to Waewood in the east, using the main road but then going into the wild south, along foot paths not often used and feeling more like wilderness than civilization, or at least to you since hours and now days have gone by without meeting another sentient soul.
You followed the treeline on your left as instructed, and so met a few wilderland critters--birds, mostly, but some other beasts that took no interest in you. Even as you rested for lunch on first day, in the shade of some trees, you noticed silence the depth of which you had not experienced in a long time, if ever.
OOG How do you think Eylf would react in a very quiet wilderness like this? Does she guess why it might be so quiet?
GM & Wild Envisioner for the Kingdom of the Four Gospels
GM for Waterdeep Dragon Heist
Playing:
Kethra Moonraven / Human socialite and occasional Sorceress if you piss her off in Sri Raji, the Barovia of the jungle
Nature: 9
Eylf cocked her head as she scanned the area.
It was quiet.....why would birds stop singing? Hiding? Maybe? But from what?
She got to her feet a rumbling growl unbidden in her chest, she quelled it immediately then let it continue...it made people avoid her, but there were no people here. Places without people were strange, but she didn't not like it.
Indeed.
You reflect on your journey so far. After a night in Waewood, you continued to march on throughout most of the second day, watching the sun--massive and hot in the sky--cross the sky from east, where the trees are, to west, where the mountains are. As it set it cast an orange light into the forest, illuminating the first few dozen feet of trees, but casting the remainder into dark brown that was both pretty, but also kind of unsettling because really, anything could have been there, waiting. You realized that this feeling was the feeling of utter aloneness--of being tiny in a wide limitless expanse of nature. And even now, in the sunshine at breakfast, you feel it now--not something you're used to, or enjoy.
Every now and again, you've been pulling out ID's note to make sure you haven't missed a step but each time you put it back, feeling vaguely unsatisfied. Now that the excitement of going out on a mission from ID has settled, a seed of uncertainty has been growing in your mind, one you can't quite put your finger on.
To be fair: it could have been the exhaustion talking. Walking from sun-up to sunset for two days has tested your physical limits in the same way that being alone for two days has tested your mental limits. Bleary eyed, you decided to take advantage of the last dregs of sunlight to read ID's note again and pull it out for what felt like the millionth time:
You put the note away--too exhausted to find meaning in words you've read a million times by now.
Please roll a survival check to see how your first attempt to camp out last night (as I am assuming you spent your first night on this journey at an inn in Waewood and not in the wild like this).
GM & Wild Envisioner for the Kingdom of the Four Gospels
GM for Waterdeep Dragon Heist
Playing:
Kethra Moonraven / Human socialite and occasional Sorceress if you piss her off in Sri Raji, the Barovia of the jungle
Survival: 11
OOG Woops, edited post #3 a bit because I got your current placement confused with last night's narrative. Sorry about that! and hope it isn't too confusing but just in case, the note was read on the evening of the second night, and it is now your third morning. Your survival check of 15 is resolved as follows:
Turns out that making a fire was easy, and eating rations is even easier. Being exhausted to your very bones made sleeping the easiest thing in the world, and if anything visited you that night, you were none the wiser. If anything, it's been too quiet.
But not something you need to worry about now, with a 4. You return to the present and scan the way forward. If things go as planned, you should make it to the northeast side of that lake ID mentioned. And then....what? Meet the party? Just kind of walk up and say HEY PALS, ITS ME, EYLF, REMEMBER FROM THE ACADEMY? No no, that won't do. You decide to give it a think as you walk.
After a very quiet breakfast of rations, I guess, you pack up and continue the familiar footpath as sun makes it familiar ascent over the left side of the sky. By the time it is at its highest peak, you have already started to see trees on the other side of the path. At first they are sparse, small and dry--more like shrubs really. But eventually they grow tall, and cluster, and the ground underfoot starts to feel a little more soil like (as opposed to so much packed dirt.) It smells so different here! Like...what exactly? Not sure.
Time passes a little more quickly now that the landscape is changing and eventually, just as you expected, you find yourself at a large body of water. It is pretty rugged by the shore, with lots of debris from the woods surrounding, and thick ribbons of watery plants laying dead on the banks. The sand is fine and dark, and the water itself looks dark as well.
***
How does Eylf feel about large bodies of water? The Commons (where they are all from) has a beach community that a lot of the kids would often go to--is this something she would do? Would she take part with friends? Or is this sort of foreign to her?
GM & Wild Envisioner for the Kingdom of the Four Gospels
GM for Waterdeep Dragon Heist
Playing:
Kethra Moonraven / Human socialite and occasional Sorceress if you piss her off in Sri Raji, the Barovia of the jungle
Eylf emerged from the scrub and surveyed the lake, she had often observed the other students at play and leisure at the beachside but crowds were not really a place she felt comfortable, though she had slipped down at night to rest in the dark waters....
Something she could never explain called her to dark places and darker waters, she dug her toes into the black sand and breathed in deep...the smell of tannin and wet vegetation somehow calming her.
There wasn't far to go now, she had a little time...she slipped off her travelling cloak and slid into the dark waters...something at the back of her mind told her to dive deep and let the black waters fill her lungs while she rested in the deep......but she could not breath water no mater how much her instincts told her she could....
She rested in the shallows, cooling her scales for an hour then dressed and continued on her journey...
When Eylf clambers back up to the bank after an hour she realizes that she's not quite sure which direction Kindermarsh Village is from here. In fact, it occurs to her that it was never made clear what to do once she got to the lake. The Village is on the north side of the lake she thought but maybe she's come a little too far south. A bubble of frustration comes up from deep within her as she assesses the landscape. Why wouldn't ID tell her about this? Why would he be so opaque?
Unless this was a test. Just like at the Academy, all of the practicum. Days upon days working through riddles, in small rooms, in large dungeons, in classrooms like bags of beholding, containing cities within them.
Ok, so maybe this was a test. She just had to be resourceful, keep her head on. Find the village, find the group.
She has two options then: go left (keeping the shoreline on her right) or go right (keeping the shoreline on her left).
GM & Wild Envisioner for the Kingdom of the Four Gospels
GM for Waterdeep Dragon Heist
Playing:
Kethra Moonraven / Human socialite and occasional Sorceress if you piss her off in Sri Raji, the Barovia of the jungle
Scrunching up her snout she finally decides to head left......though she wasn't really sure why..
Fair-I'd have you roll but this is something the dice can't help Eylf with. She wasn't exactly set up for success here.
***
Eylf decides to follow the foot path with the lake to her right. It takes her close to the shoreline for some time, but then climbs up a bit of a bank so the lake is below, spread out like a wide blue sheet--it looks so clear from up here, and less muddy somehow, though the shoreline remains clogged with leaves and roots and bark and dirt and such. To her left, mostly fields in tidy little parcels--obviously farm country. She might very well be trespassing as she walks along but at this point she'd love a sign that she's walking in the right direction so she plods on, often looking into the fields for houses or pathways or any evidence of people but finding none.
After a few hours, she is certain she's gone in the wrong direction--surely she would have come across signs of a village by now, even a small one. But the thought of doubling back today after such a long march already gives her pause. Instead, she starts to wonder what might happen if she looked for a friendly farmer to feed her something other than rations. What would they say of a dragonborn at the door?
OOC you have 3 options that I can think of, but by all means don't be limited by my imagination:
1-Turn back and head in the direction you think the village might be in (you can roll an intelligence check of some kind to recall maps or geography or whatever you think might be helpful to support this)
2- Keep going south, again with an intelligence check to recall what might be at the south end of the lake)
3- Go up into the fields to your left to see if you can find a farmer or a main road or something
GM & Wild Envisioner for the Kingdom of the Four Gospels
GM for Waterdeep Dragon Heist
Playing:
Kethra Moonraven / Human socialite and occasional Sorceress if you piss her off in Sri Raji, the Barovia of the jungle
Eylf is tempted to just swim directly across the lake to cut the time from retracing her steps but no matter what her instincts tell her she is not overly confident that she could swim all that way without issue.
After several minutes pondering she determines to just keep heading the way she is and hoping for the best......it hasn't hurt too much so far....
Int: 8
She thinks that The Sallows are near the southern end of the lake, but she can't recall the significance of them. (And to be honest, given the way she was told about the mission, I'm not sure she would ever have known that the mold is actually nearer the southern edge of the lake, though she may have heard it around the school, or around town as rumours are now starting to form).
In the meantime, she continues following along the lake side, which is growing more and more swampy the further south she goes. The tidy little parcels of land have given way to untouched wilderness, reminiscent of the northern forest border she followed to get here, but soggy and lean and darker somehow. The trees are different: fewer coniferous trees and more long gangly trees, like willows, but with dark knotted trunks and branches that seem to drip as opposed to sway. Also: flies. Midges, mosquitoes, black flies--all manner of little buzzing black biting annoying things. As a dragonborn I'd say Eylf is likely immune to most of these but the incessant buzzing around her head has got to be a pain.
It is around dinner time when she realizes that she's been walking in a sort of a boggy woodland for some time and that in fact, she appears to be in a the middle of some sort of forest. And then, just as she is trying to remember any maps she might have seen before, she hears a screech of some kind. It's wild sounding, and loud, and feels like the call of something wounded. It sounds to be about 30 feet away.
How does Eylf react to this unknown wail? Would her inclination be to bolt directly to its source, or to investigate, or something in between?
GM & Wild Envisioner for the Kingdom of the Four Gospels
GM for Waterdeep Dragon Heist
Playing:
Kethra Moonraven / Human socialite and occasional Sorceress if you piss her off in Sri Raji, the Barovia of the jungle
Eylf span around and headed for the sound...perhaps someone needed help?
Please roll a perception check
GM & Wild Envisioner for the Kingdom of the Four Gospels
GM for Waterdeep Dragon Heist
Playing:
Kethra Moonraven / Human socialite and occasional Sorceress if you piss her off in Sri Raji, the Barovia of the jungle
7
The ground a few paces in front of you is...smoking.
You take a step and lean down to take a closer look and indeed, there is a sort of vein of blackened, sludgy earth that is emitting very gentle plumes of smoke, as though it's being eaten by some sort of acid (or is some sort of acid?) It makes no sound, but it smells like a wet burning, if that could be a thing. It's not altogether unpleasant but it seems very wrong. And as you stand you see you see that in fact, it's all around you--this area is rife with it as far as your eye can see, these black veins against the otherwise greenish brown of the boggy forest floor.
GM & Wild Envisioner for the Kingdom of the Four Gospels
GM for Waterdeep Dragon Heist
Playing:
Kethra Moonraven / Human socialite and occasional Sorceress if you piss her off in Sri Raji, the Barovia of the jungle
And as you stand there, from a distance, you hear a clear voice call out:
Don't touch that! it says. It's dangerous!
GM & Wild Envisioner for the Kingdom of the Four Gospels
GM for Waterdeep Dragon Heist
Playing:
Kethra Moonraven / Human socialite and occasional Sorceress if you piss her off in Sri Raji, the Barovia of the jungle
Looking about she called back, " I wasn't planning on it!"
" What is it? Uh....and where are you?"