Harold's eyes go wide when the situation rapidly escalates. A moment later eyes narrow as he swoops down behind the rider and attempts to drop down on the back of the beast behind them before stabbing down with his weapons..
The dragonborn watches mutely as Harold swoops over towards the boat to engage their leader. He had to do something besides just stand here and watch, but what? Maybe he could focus on taking out the boats? Yes, that could work.
Taking a deep breath, he reaches out to the Song within him. He finds it thrumming deep within his soul, eager to be released again. Sighing, he takes ahold of it, and his body bursts into flames once more. However, unlike last time, he seemed to be in control of himself. While the rhythms did urge him to burn everything around him, it was much more mild and easier to tame. It was like it took time for it to build up to uncontrollable levels.
Now glowing like his own miniature sun with golden flames raging about his body, he zips along the river a ways to get a petter position to assault the enemy watercraft. Once in position, he cups his hands together and slowly pries them apart, his hands and arms trembling as if he's pulling against a great weight. As he does, the inferno dancing around him like a corona of light and heat stream towards the air between his hands and start amassing into a furious orb of fire. Not able to hold onto it for more then a few seconds, Rastrin launches to orb of fire at the smaller boats in the river, and it explodes away from him in burst of eager flames. It hurtles across the river much faster than Rastrin anticipated, and the unfortunate souls upon the boat closest to the larger boat have only a moment to prepare before it detonates amongst their ranks.
The fireball slams into the boat, and it blossoms into a fiery maelstrom of fire and destruction, sending out a shockwave across the river. The screams and cries of pain are drowned out by the thunderous retort of the fireball, and the boat is sundered into dozens of different-sized, flaming pieces that rain down upon the other watercraft. Amidst whatever's left of the boat, Rastrin doesn't see any survivors clinging to it, though some could have easily escaped into the river. Regardless, a wave of revulsion and horror washes through him. Did he really just kill someone? Never before had he killed anyone, and yet, he had the ability to kill people in droves almost as easily as crushing an insect under heel.
Burn them! The Song urges. Numbly, he surrenders more control to his power, trying to flee from the feelings of horror he felt. Maybe if he lost himself to the Song, he wouldn't have to worry the feelings of guilt and horror that held him. In a daze, he shakily brings his hands together again and prepares another fireball.
Harold tucks in his arms to gain speed as he descends quickly towards the enemy. Once he was close, he would extend his arms as he attempted to plunge his weapons into the knight. As the last moment however, the whistling of the merchants blades through the wind alerts the leader and he ducks out of the way. Harold swoops down past the knight and slams into the critically wounded keelboat pilot, cushioning his landing as he tumbled onto the deck.
After shaking his head, he stands up in a daze. Still clutching his weapons and now covered in the blood of the keelboat pilot, he steadies himself for a fight against the knight and crocodile. In a flash, the tip of a lance grazes the side of Harolds face, causing blood to trickle down into his beard. Harold shakes his head once more, wiping his face with the back of his hand as his own blood mixes with that of the keelboat pilot. Now the merchant was focus. He easily rolled to dodge another flash of steel from the knights lance before jumping backwards to avoid the gnashing jaws of the massive crocodile.
Harold didn't like fighting fair... let alone when he was out numbered. After seeing the skill of the knight, he quickly decided to focus his attacks on the crocodile. When the beast launched his next attack, Harold lept backwards just out of its reach before plunging both weapons down into the top of the beasts head...
Shaken by the discovery of the dead Waterdeep soldier and his Griffon mount, Shay decides to circle back to the bank and clue the others in. She remembers her extra task of needing to commune with nature anyway, using it as a mild distractor for the moment as she flies back. At the forefront of her mind are the details of the riders armor and their destination to Feathergale.
It is on her way back north that Shay, her eyes keen enough to spot a field mouse from two hundred paces, sees across the Dessarin a scene that gives her pause in her swift flight. There, under an overhang where the boughs of long-leaved oaks cross over a shallow, grassy strip of exposed land, in front of a steep escarpment overgrown with ivy and winterberry, Shay sees the prow of a keelboat, hidden completely from either riverbank, but just visible from her vantage point.
And as she pauses, Shay once again feels a tingling shudder, for behind the escarpment lies the steep vale where stands that same monastery that had so affected her with its nameless menace on her earlier southern course.
HAROLD and RASTRIN
The giant crocodile whips left and right and somehow evades Harold’s killing blow, yet the meechant’s blades sink deep into the reptile’s shoulders and blood courses out. The crocodile plunges back into the water, taking its rider with it, but not before its eight-foot, 150-stone tail whips around and cracks into Harold’s shoulder, sending him crashing through the gunwale where he barely manages to grasp the boat’s edge and avoid plummeting into the Dessarin himself.
Two more sleek dugouts remain after Rastrin’s fiery orb consumes the first of them, which floats listlessly along, burning fiercely and sending a cloud of steam drifting toward the Waterdeep keelboat. A few cinders alight upon the keelboat’s rolled sail and the pinpoints of red shine brightly.
The dugouts’ occupants pick up long javelins and despite the rocking of their small vessels as they stand, seem with natural fluidity able to track the Dragonborn as he drifts above them. One of them heaves, the javelin glints dully in the silver sunlight, and it connects with Rastrin, impaling him through the back under the ribs.
Three of the pirates — if pirates they are — board the keelboat and the warriors, bearing shields made from the shells of enormous crabs, their blades lined with shark teeth, slash at one of the hapless Waterdeep oarsmen, drawing a cruel gash from shoulder to hip. The man falls overboard, motionless.
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DM for Deathworld: Lost Mine of Phandelver// Story Guide for COYOTE and CROW: Cahokia Forever//Dev Horndin Curious Critters//Co-creator: Princes of the Apocalypse - A DnD Story
Harold growls as his weapons slam into the creature but fails to end its life. The scaley beast was faster than the merchant had expected and both the beast and its rider manage to escape into the water before he can continue his attack. Moving to his feet, he glances down at the badly injured keelboat captain and simply shakes his head. There wasn't anything he could do for the man so he simply looked for others he could help. Scanning the surface of the water, he has to hold his hand over his face as the heat of a nearby explosion threatens to singe his beard.
Lowering his arm, he locks in on the pirates and races towards them with weapons drawn. Leaping into the air, higher than normal thanks to Rastrin's spell, the then attempts to drive his weapons down into the shoulders of one of the attackers.
In her distracted state Shay nearly looks past an area below where a portion of a keelboat rests tucked away from any prying eyes. From her place above however it’s an easy thing to spot, her hawk vision giving her an advantage. She places this bit of information away as well, knowing it to be vital and best to get to the other as quickly as possible.
Though a chillingly familiar sensation of unease sweeps though her body with enough force to nearly stop her motions mid flight. Not far behind the area Shay sees the source and is made even more wary at the sight of the same monastery she saw on her way South. Curiosity taking hold over her worries in a rare moment of victory for it, she circles lower in order to see if she can spy any outward reason for the feeling this place created within her.
The flaming dragonborn cries out as the javelin pierces him, though the extreme heat from his body cauterized the wound instantly. In a thoughtless reaction, he lashed out protectively with his magic, and the unfortunate brigand erupted in flames. He only has a few seconds to cry out in agony as he's burned away into ash and cinders that drift away in the breeze.
With hand pressed up against the javelin jutting from him, Rastrin drifts farther away from the boats in hopes of getting outside of there range. As he does, he flings out several javelins of his own made of flame towards the occupants of the boats.
The monastery is a windswept, rectangular structure that seems simultaneously imposing and squat. Tall for a single-story building, a hundred yards wide, fifty yards from front to back, yet modest, efficient, and firm in its architectural details.
A trail leads to it from the enclosing hills, and all the way to the area where the keelboats are hidden and beyond, to follow the river. From the keelboats, one would walk over the hills, then through an ever-narrowing defile between bluffs of wind-sculpted sandstone. Eventually the walls draw in so closely to the path that one could reach out and touch either side, but then the narrow space opens into a hidden canyon in the heart of the hills where the monastery sits, surrounded by a few tiered fields along the canyon walls where several dozen individuals in undyed robes are at work with a small herd of cows, tending to henhouses and stables or beginning to plow the hardened earth following the spring thaw.
The sprawling monastery has dark, narrow windows and red tile rooftops, and stands in the middle of this natural amphitheater, ringed by sandstone cliffs all around. In front -- the southern face of the structure -- a weathered flight of stone steps leads up to the closed monastery doors made of heavy timber with iron studs.
A small door, perhaps a servants’ entrance, is on the northwest side of the monastery. On the northeast side, a low wall encloses a good-sized garden. The eastern portion of the monastery is in very poor repair — the walls there are crumbling, and the windows have been bricked up with old masonry. A small side door is near that section, in the southeast portion of the building.
Having seen this much of the structure, Shay still has no answer to the source of the unrest she feels. But the feeling remains.
DM for Deathworld: Lost Mine of Phandelver// Story Guide for COYOTE and CROW: Cahokia Forever//Dev Horndin Curious Critters//Co-creator: Princes of the Apocalypse - A DnD Story
Circling over the monastery and the area surrounding it multiple times over, Shay can only see several robed people hard at work a ways off and what appears to be the well kept structure itself. If anything were out of the ordinary she was certain that it would stand out, but for all of her searching nothing jumps out at her.
She then takes stock of the decrepit eastern portion that has seen far better days in her opinion and weighs out her options about whether or not to carry on or see what else she could potentially find. Shay thinks it over for a few tense moments after spying a side door not too far from the crumbling eastern section before deciding to leave it for the time being.
Curious as the place was, it unfortunately isn’t a main priority at the moment in the same way getting the information she had to the others was. She decided she’d learn about the place organically if it had more going for it than simply being generally off putting to anyone near by. That by itself wasn’t particularly dangerous. With her mind regrettably set, Shay heads back the way she came and gratefully leaves the unpleasant energy of the monastery behind.
The merchant does not fight fair. Rolling towards the enemies, he slashes with his rapier and dagger quickly. Each strike aimed at a knee or tendon in the legs of the remaining enemies. With the pirates initially distracted by the helpless crew, Harold is able to quickly hamstring the three pirates. Once they were wounded and unable to stand, he would quickly circle around the wounded enemies... driving his weapons into any exposed areas of flesh he could find before the enemy could move to protect themselves. Eventually the movement of his foes gets slower and slower as the deck of the boat becomes slick with their blood. Eventually, they stop moving all together... and Harold steps forward to finish them off with a flick of his rapier against their throats.
While two of his three lances of fire narrowly miss their targets, the third bolt slams into one of the brigand's sides, and he falls to the floor of the boat writhing in pain. Teeth gritted at the agony of the javelin piercing his side, Rastrin flings out more bolts of fire to distract and injure the brigands as Harold methodically cuts them down. The Song pushed him to simply annihilate everyone on the boats with an eruption of pure destruction, but Rastrin manages to hold himself back. The urges were much weaker than they were last night, but he still found part of himself enjoying burning the brigands to ash as they fought back feebly against Harold.
The keelboat crew has taken cover, a few joining in the defense of the vessel. When the last reaver has been dispatched, the last flaming dugout left crew less to drift lazily downriver, and with no return of the crocodile rider, the crew exchange glances, wondering what to expect from Rastrin and Harold. The pilot suddenly kneels and bows his head, and the rest follow suit.
“We beg mercy Lords of the sky! We lay down our arms and ask that you spare our lives! Our cargo is yours if you wish, meager repayment for saving us from river pirates and that creature!”
SHAY
Soon, Shay has returned to the little sandbar from which her flight began. Circling, she sees Marcus and the Yartarin Guard on the Larch Road, waiting, and two miles north on the Dessarin, something strange: smoke.
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DM for Deathworld: Lost Mine of Phandelver// Story Guide for COYOTE and CROW: Cahokia Forever//Dev Horndin Curious Critters//Co-creator: Princes of the Apocalypse - A DnD Story
With the last invader dispatched, Rastrin drifts down lazily and alights upon the deck of the boat. Wincing in pain, he reaches up to the javelin and incinerated it with a a casual touch. As cinders and charred wood clatter to the floor, he extinguishes his flames, and for the second time in the past 24 hours, he finds himself almost naked in front of a bunch of strangers. Luckily, his trousers were made of a more durable material than his shirt was, but it was still singed and partially burned away.
With his body emitting faint plumes of smoke and coated in ash to the point where you could barely make out his blood-red scales, Rastrin says to the captain, “We’re no lords. Just a couple of guys that figured you needed help.” Gesturing to the bleeding out or smoldering bodies around the boat, he asks, “Have these bandits been causing trouble recently? What can you tell us about them?”
The remainder of her flight back is uneventful save for the experience of looking at things from her vantagepoint in the sky which Shay never grows tired of and it doesn't take long for her to see the sandbar she needed to land at to regroup with Marcos and the Yartarian guard Wit waiting near the Larch Road. While beginning her descent, Shay casts one more look over the horizon to get her last look at it from the air until it was time to wildshape again only to discover rising smoke filtering into the sky in the direction of the north. She wastes no time in heading that way, already planning out spells in her head for how to tame any erratic flames. Anyone watching would've seen her go into a dive and arch back upwards with urgency, flying off in an unexplainable haste.
Harold allows his large companion to do the talking at first as he moves to each of the enemy corpses, looking for both valuables and any clues as to who they were or why they were attacking these boats. "Rastrin here is right... We are wern't out looking for trouble... Just thought we would stop and help out. I wouldn't turn down a reward for saving your lives if you wanted... but you shouldn't feel obligated." The merchant says with a smile. "We were actually looking for a caravan of giant bugs... or maybe men wearing stone armor? You seen anything like that?" Harold asks as he finishes up his looting and moves to stand next to his companion.
The keelship pilot scoffs at Rastrin, his eyes rolling slightly. “Just a couple guys?,” he repeats incredulously.
The crew remains kneeling. Powerful nobles sometimes enjoy toying with their servants or crews, laying verbal or social traps and waiting for the unwary to step into their snares before torturing them at leisure as they hang suspended and helpless.
Biting his lip and controlling his expression, the pilot repeats, “We thank you mi’Lords, and I repeat, our cargo is yours if you will but spare our lives.” To Rastrin’s questions, he answers, “I have heard rumors that piracy has increased on the Dessarin, but I have never seen the like of these before. Those shields and swords… and the markings they bear. I do not recognize them.”
He looks to the others for answers to Rastrin’s question and Harold’s question about giant bugs and men wearing stone armor, but they all shake their heads. However, something about the tone of the questions allows a degree of tension to dissipate and the crewmen stand our sit around the boat rather then kneeling. “With your powerful magic, my Lord," the pilot answers, "I thought you would have known who these pirates answered to. And giant… bugs…” he trails off, unable to think of how to respond.
The crew exchange glances as they watch Harold looting the burned and bloody corpses. As for the markings the pilot mentioned, both Rastrin and Harold notice them, a small sigil like an X with its feet connected by a line. The bodies are uniformly lacking in gold and jewelry, but several have small tattoos showing the same X symbol.
SHAY
At this moment, Shay, in hawk form, reaches the keelboat where she sees several rowboats or dugouts flaming smokily and drifting slowly downriver. A keelboat – unlike the one she herself saw hidden on the far bank farther south – flies the colors of Waterdeep and points south upon the Dessarin. Harold is looting slain unarmored bodies, while a half dozen individuals who appear to be the keelboat crewmembers at first kneel submissively while conferring with Rastrin and Harold, but after a few words, stand or sit normally, relaxing somewhat.
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DM for Deathworld: Lost Mine of Phandelver// Story Guide for COYOTE and CROW: Cahokia Forever//Dev Horndin Curious Critters//Co-creator: Princes of the Apocalypse - A DnD Story
Harold would pull out his his forgery kit and carefully draw pictures of the tattoo on a piece of paper before rolling it up and placing it in a small leather bag. "Unless you happen to be hauling crates of magical weapons or items that may help us in our investigation... you can keep your reward. We are on a mission to find a missing delegation headed to Waterdeep. We found that most of that delegation was murdered... but we are hoping to track down their attackers and rescue those that are still alive." Harold says before moving to wipe the blood off his blade on the clothing of one of the attackers.
"Do any of you recognize this tattoo?" Harold would ask, gesturing towards one of the tattoos on one of the corpses on the ground. "This X symbol... does it have a meaning?"
With Harold taking charge of the conversation, Rastrin begins to turn his attention to other things, first and foremost of which is the wound in his torso. Wincing, he tugs away the thin wisps of his shirt that still somehow clung to his body so he could get a better look at the wound. To his untrained eye, it look pretty bad, but it surprisingly didn't hurt as bad as he thought it would. The blood from his wound had been charred and burnt to crisp while he was on fire, so it was basically cauterized at this point. He'd have to have someone with medical experience check it out when he got back to the others. He had heard some pretty nasty stories about what internal damage and infection could do to a person, so he could only hope that nothing too important had been cut inside him.
After inspecting his wound, he turns his gaze to the shore and the river they were bobbing along on. Where did that giant crocodile and their rider head off to? He didn't like the idea of them escaping so they could just terrorize and murder more people in the future. As he looks out, he notices a hawk approaching them, and he can't help but smile a little bit. He really liked birds, and hawks were some of his favorite.
Approaching the source of the smoke, it becomes clear to Shay as she spots a charred vessel that she’d missed out on one interesting encounter. She takes in what she can from up high and quickly determines that whatever danger Harold and Rastrin were in has passed and thankfully they don’t bare any life threatening injuries she can see. Shitting her gaze some, she notices the crew watches both men with a mixture of awe and fear on their faces, and unsurprisingly neither seem too fond of the attention.
Shay lands onboard in time to hear Harold questioning a crew member she assumed to be important enough for getting information from. She returns to her elf form and forces herself to keep focused on her companions and not the dead bodies laying around, going to Rastrin who appeared less preoccupied at the moment. “I almost wish I’d been here to help. Were you attacked by these people?”
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Harold
Harold's eyes go wide when the situation rapidly escalates. A moment later eyes narrow as he swoops down behind the rider and attempts to drop down on the back of the beast behind them before stabbing down with his weapons..
RASTRIN
The dragonborn watches mutely as Harold swoops over towards the boat to engage their leader. He had to do something besides just stand here and watch, but what? Maybe he could focus on taking out the boats? Yes, that could work.
Taking a deep breath, he reaches out to the Song within him. He finds it thrumming deep within his soul, eager to be released again. Sighing, he takes ahold of it, and his body bursts into flames once more. However, unlike last time, he seemed to be in control of himself. While the rhythms did urge him to burn everything around him, it was much more mild and easier to tame. It was like it took time for it to build up to uncontrollable levels.
Now glowing like his own miniature sun with golden flames raging about his body, he zips along the river a ways to get a petter position to assault the enemy watercraft. Once in position, he cups his hands together and slowly pries them apart, his hands and arms trembling as if he's pulling against a great weight. As he does, the inferno dancing around him like a corona of light and heat stream towards the air between his hands and start amassing into a furious orb of fire. Not able to hold onto it for more then a few seconds, Rastrin launches to orb of fire at the smaller boats in the river, and it explodes away from him in burst of eager flames. It hurtles across the river much faster than Rastrin anticipated, and the unfortunate souls upon the boat closest to the larger boat have only a moment to prepare before it detonates amongst their ranks.
The fireball slams into the boat, and it blossoms into a fiery maelstrom of fire and destruction, sending out a shockwave across the river. The screams and cries of pain are drowned out by the thunderous retort of the fireball, and the boat is sundered into dozens of different-sized, flaming pieces that rain down upon the other watercraft. Amidst whatever's left of the boat, Rastrin doesn't see any survivors clinging to it, though some could have easily escaped into the river. Regardless, a wave of revulsion and horror washes through him. Did he really just kill someone? Never before had he killed anyone, and yet, he had the ability to kill people in droves almost as easily as crushing an insect under heel.
Burn them! The Song urges. Numbly, he surrenders more control to his power, trying to flee from the feelings of horror he felt. Maybe if he lost himself to the Song, he wouldn't have to worry the feelings of guilt and horror that held him. In a daze, he shakily brings his hands together again and prepares another fireball.
Harold
Harold tucks in his arms to gain speed as he descends quickly towards the enemy. Once he was close, he would extend his arms as he attempted to plunge his weapons into the knight. As the last moment however, the whistling of the merchants blades through the wind alerts the leader and he ducks out of the way. Harold swoops down past the knight and slams into the critically wounded keelboat pilot, cushioning his landing as he tumbled onto the deck.
After shaking his head, he stands up in a daze. Still clutching his weapons and now covered in the blood of the keelboat pilot, he steadies himself for a fight against the knight and crocodile. In a flash, the tip of a lance grazes the side of Harolds face, causing blood to trickle down into his beard. Harold shakes his head once more, wiping his face with the back of his hand as his own blood mixes with that of the keelboat pilot. Now the merchant was focus. He easily rolled to dodge another flash of steel from the knights lance before jumping backwards to avoid the gnashing jaws of the massive crocodile.
Harold didn't like fighting fair... let alone when he was out numbered. After seeing the skill of the knight, he quickly decided to focus his attacks on the crocodile. When the beast launched his next attack, Harold lept backwards just out of its reach before plunging both weapons down into the top of the beasts head...
SHAY
Shaken by the discovery of the dead Waterdeep soldier and his Griffon mount, Shay decides to circle back to the bank and clue the others in. She remembers her extra task of needing to commune with nature anyway, using it as a mild distractor for the moment as she flies back. At the forefront of her mind are the details of the riders armor and their destination to Feathergale.
SHAY
It is on her way back north that Shay, her eyes keen enough to spot a field mouse from two hundred paces, sees across the Dessarin a scene that gives her pause in her swift flight. There, under an overhang where the boughs of long-leaved oaks cross over a shallow, grassy strip of exposed land, in front of a steep escarpment overgrown with ivy and winterberry, Shay sees the prow of a keelboat, hidden completely from either riverbank, but just visible from her vantage point.
And as she pauses, Shay once again feels a tingling shudder, for behind the escarpment lies the steep vale where stands that same monastery that had so affected her with its nameless menace on her earlier southern course.
HAROLD and RASTRIN
The giant crocodile whips left and right and somehow evades Harold’s killing blow, yet the meechant’s blades sink deep into the reptile’s shoulders and blood courses out. The crocodile plunges back into the water, taking its rider with it, but not before its eight-foot, 150-stone tail whips around and cracks into Harold’s shoulder, sending him crashing through the gunwale where he barely manages to grasp the boat’s edge and avoid plummeting into the Dessarin himself.
Two more sleek dugouts remain after Rastrin’s fiery orb consumes the first of them, which floats listlessly along, burning fiercely and sending a cloud of steam drifting toward the Waterdeep keelboat. A few cinders alight upon the keelboat’s rolled sail and the pinpoints of red shine brightly.
The dugouts’ occupants pick up long javelins and despite the rocking of their small vessels as they stand, seem with natural fluidity able to track the Dragonborn as he drifts above them. One of them heaves, the javelin glints dully in the silver sunlight, and it connects with Rastrin, impaling him through the back under the ribs.
Three of the pirates — if pirates they are — board the keelboat and the warriors, bearing shields made from the shells of enormous crabs, their blades lined with shark teeth, slash at one of the hapless Waterdeep oarsmen, drawing a cruel gash from shoulder to hip. The man falls overboard, motionless.
DM for Deathworld: Lost Mine of Phandelver // Story Guide for COYOTE and CROW: Cahokia Forever // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters // Co-creator: Princes of the Apocalypse - A DnD Story
Harold
Harold growls as his weapons slam into the creature but fails to end its life. The scaley beast was faster than the merchant had expected and both the beast and its rider manage to escape into the water before he can continue his attack. Moving to his feet, he glances down at the badly injured keelboat captain and simply shakes his head. There wasn't anything he could do for the man so he simply looked for others he could help. Scanning the surface of the water, he has to hold his hand over his face as the heat of a nearby explosion threatens to singe his beard.
Lowering his arm, he locks in on the pirates and races towards them with weapons drawn. Leaping into the air, higher than normal thanks to Rastrin's spell, the then attempts to drive his weapons down into the shoulders of one of the attackers.
SHAY
In her distracted state Shay nearly looks past an area below where a portion of a keelboat rests tucked away from any prying eyes. From her place above however it’s an easy thing to spot, her hawk vision giving her an advantage. She places this bit of information away as well, knowing it to be vital and best to get to the other as quickly as possible.
Though a chillingly familiar sensation of unease sweeps though her body with enough force to nearly stop her motions mid flight. Not far behind the area Shay sees the source and is made even more wary at the sight of the same monastery she saw on her way South. Curiosity taking hold over her worries in a rare moment of victory for it, she circles lower in order to see if she can spy any outward reason for the feeling this place created within her.
RASTRIN
The flaming dragonborn cries out as the javelin pierces him, though the extreme heat from his body cauterized the wound instantly. In a thoughtless reaction, he lashed out protectively with his magic, and the unfortunate brigand erupted in flames. He only has a few seconds to cry out in agony as he's burned away into ash and cinders that drift away in the breeze.
With hand pressed up against the javelin jutting from him, Rastrin drifts farther away from the boats in hopes of getting outside of there range. As he does, he flings out several javelins of his own made of flame towards the occupants of the boats.
SHAY
The monastery is a windswept, rectangular structure that seems simultaneously imposing and squat. Tall for a single-story building, a hundred yards wide, fifty yards from front to back, yet modest, efficient, and firm in its architectural details.
A trail leads to it from the enclosing hills, and all the way to the area where the keelboats are hidden and beyond, to follow the river. From the keelboats, one would walk over the hills, then through an ever-narrowing defile between bluffs of wind-sculpted sandstone. Eventually the walls draw in so closely to the path that one could reach out and touch either side, but then the narrow space opens into a hidden canyon in the heart of the hills where the monastery sits, surrounded by a few tiered fields along the canyon walls where several dozen individuals in undyed robes are at work with a small herd of cows, tending to henhouses and stables or beginning to plow the hardened earth following the spring thaw.
The sprawling monastery has dark, narrow windows and red tile rooftops, and stands in the middle of this natural amphitheater, ringed by sandstone cliffs all around. In front -- the southern face of the structure -- a weathered flight of stone steps leads up to the closed monastery doors made of heavy timber with iron studs.
A small door, perhaps a servants’ entrance, is on the northwest side of the monastery. On the northeast side, a low wall encloses a good-sized garden. The eastern portion of the monastery is in very poor repair — the walls there are crumbling, and the windows have been bricked up with old masonry. A small side door is near that section, in the southeast portion of the building.
Having seen this much of the structure, Shay still has no answer to the source of the unrest she feels. But the feeling remains.
DM for Deathworld: Lost Mine of Phandelver // Story Guide for COYOTE and CROW: Cahokia Forever // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters // Co-creator: Princes of the Apocalypse - A DnD Story
SHAY
Circling over the monastery and the area surrounding it multiple times over, Shay can only see several robed people hard at work a ways off and what appears to be the well kept structure itself. If anything were out of the ordinary she was certain that it would stand out, but for all of her searching nothing jumps out at her.
She then takes stock of the decrepit eastern portion that has seen far better days in her opinion and weighs out her options about whether or not to carry on or see what else she could potentially find. Shay thinks it over for a few tense moments after spying a side door not too far from the crumbling eastern section before deciding to leave it for the time being.
Curious as the place was, it unfortunately isn’t a main priority at the moment in the same way getting the information she had to the others was. She decided she’d learn about the place organically if it had more going for it than simply being generally off putting to anyone near by. That by itself wasn’t particularly dangerous. With her mind regrettably set, Shay heads back the way she came and gratefully leaves the unpleasant energy of the monastery behind.
Harold
The merchant does not fight fair. Rolling towards the enemies, he slashes with his rapier and dagger quickly. Each strike aimed at a knee or tendon in the legs of the remaining enemies. With the pirates initially distracted by the helpless crew, Harold is able to quickly hamstring the three pirates. Once they were wounded and unable to stand, he would quickly circle around the wounded enemies... driving his weapons into any exposed areas of flesh he could find before the enemy could move to protect themselves. Eventually the movement of his foes gets slower and slower as the deck of the boat becomes slick with their blood. Eventually, they stop moving all together... and Harold steps forward to finish them off with a flick of his rapier against their throats.
RASTRIN
While two of his three lances of fire narrowly miss their targets, the third bolt slams into one of the brigand's sides, and he falls to the floor of the boat writhing in pain. Teeth gritted at the agony of the javelin piercing his side, Rastrin flings out more bolts of fire to distract and injure the brigands as Harold methodically cuts them down. The Song pushed him to simply annihilate everyone on the boats with an eruption of pure destruction, but Rastrin manages to hold himself back. The urges were much weaker than they were last night, but he still found part of himself enjoying burning the brigands to ash as they fought back feebly against Harold.
HAROLD & RASTRIN
The keelboat crew has taken cover, a few joining in the defense of the vessel. When the last reaver has been dispatched, the last flaming dugout left crew less to drift lazily downriver, and with no return of the crocodile rider, the crew exchange glances, wondering what to expect from Rastrin and Harold. The pilot suddenly kneels and bows his head, and the rest follow suit.
“We beg mercy Lords of the sky! We lay down our arms and ask that you spare our lives! Our cargo is yours if you wish, meager repayment for saving us from river pirates and that creature!”
SHAY
Soon, Shay has returned to the little sandbar from which her flight began. Circling, she sees Marcus and the Yartarin Guard on the Larch Road, waiting, and two miles north on the Dessarin, something strange: smoke.
DM for Deathworld: Lost Mine of Phandelver // Story Guide for COYOTE and CROW: Cahokia Forever // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters // Co-creator: Princes of the Apocalypse - A DnD Story
RASTRIN
With the last invader dispatched, Rastrin drifts down lazily and alights upon the deck of the boat. Wincing in pain, he reaches up to the javelin and incinerated it with a a casual touch. As cinders and charred wood clatter to the floor, he extinguishes his flames, and for the second time in the past 24 hours, he finds himself almost naked in front of a bunch of strangers. Luckily, his trousers were made of a more durable material than his shirt was, but it was still singed and partially burned away.
With his body emitting faint plumes of smoke and coated in ash to the point where you could barely make out his blood-red scales, Rastrin says to the captain, “We’re no lords. Just a couple of guys that figured you needed help.” Gesturing to the bleeding out or smoldering bodies around the boat, he asks, “Have these bandits been causing trouble recently? What can you tell us about them?”
SHAY
The remainder of her flight back is uneventful save for the experience of looking at things from her vantagepoint in the sky which Shay never grows tired of and it doesn't take long for her to see the sandbar she needed to land at to regroup with Marcos and the Yartarian guard Wit waiting near the Larch Road. While beginning her descent, Shay casts one more look over the horizon to get her last look at it from the air until it was time to wildshape again only to discover rising smoke filtering into the sky in the direction of the north. She wastes no time in heading that way, already planning out spells in her head for how to tame any erratic flames. Anyone watching would've seen her go into a dive and arch back upwards with urgency, flying off in an unexplainable haste.
Harold
Harold allows his large companion to do the talking at first as he moves to each of the enemy corpses, looking for both valuables and any clues as to who they were or why they were attacking these boats. "Rastrin here is right... We are wern't out looking for trouble... Just thought we would stop and help out. I wouldn't turn down a reward for saving your lives if you wanted... but you shouldn't feel obligated." The merchant says with a smile. "We were actually looking for a caravan of giant bugs... or maybe men wearing stone armor? You seen anything like that?" Harold asks as he finishes up his looting and moves to stand next to his companion.
The keelship pilot scoffs at Rastrin, his eyes rolling slightly. “Just a couple guys?,” he repeats incredulously.
The crew remains kneeling. Powerful nobles sometimes enjoy toying with their servants or crews, laying verbal or social traps and waiting for the unwary to step into their snares before torturing them at leisure as they hang suspended and helpless.
Biting his lip and controlling his expression, the pilot repeats, “We thank you mi’Lords, and I repeat, our cargo is yours if you will but spare our lives.”
To Rastrin’s questions, he answers, “I have heard rumors that piracy has increased on the Dessarin, but I have never seen the like of these before. Those shields and swords… and the markings they bear. I do not recognize them.”
He looks to the others for answers to Rastrin’s question and Harold’s question about giant bugs and men wearing stone armor, but they all shake their heads. However, something about the tone of the questions allows a degree of tension to dissipate and the crewmen stand our sit around the boat rather then kneeling. “With your powerful magic, my Lord," the pilot answers, "I thought you would have known who these pirates answered to. And giant… bugs…” he trails off, unable to think of how to respond.
The crew exchange glances as they watch Harold looting the burned and bloody corpses. As for the markings the pilot mentioned, both Rastrin and Harold notice them, a small sigil like an X with its feet connected by a line. The bodies are uniformly lacking in gold and jewelry, but several have small tattoos showing the same X symbol.
SHAY
At this moment, Shay, in hawk form, reaches the keelboat where she sees several rowboats or dugouts flaming smokily and drifting slowly downriver. A keelboat – unlike the one she herself saw hidden on the far bank farther south – flies the colors of Waterdeep and points south upon the Dessarin. Harold is looting slain unarmored bodies, while a half dozen individuals who appear to be the keelboat crewmembers at first kneel submissively while conferring with Rastrin and Harold, but after a few words, stand or sit normally, relaxing somewhat.
DM for Deathworld: Lost Mine of Phandelver // Story Guide for COYOTE and CROW: Cahokia Forever // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters // Co-creator: Princes of the Apocalypse - A DnD Story
Harold
Harold would pull out his his forgery kit and carefully draw pictures of the tattoo on a piece of paper before rolling it up and placing it in a small leather bag. "Unless you happen to be hauling crates of magical weapons or items that may help us in our investigation... you can keep your reward. We are on a mission to find a missing delegation headed to Waterdeep. We found that most of that delegation was murdered... but we are hoping to track down their attackers and rescue those that are still alive." Harold says before moving to wipe the blood off his blade on the clothing of one of the attackers.
"Do any of you recognize this tattoo?" Harold would ask, gesturing towards one of the tattoos on one of the corpses on the ground. "This X symbol... does it have a meaning?"
RASTRIN
With Harold taking charge of the conversation, Rastrin begins to turn his attention to other things, first and foremost of which is the wound in his torso. Wincing, he tugs away the thin wisps of his shirt that still somehow clung to his body so he could get a better look at the wound. To his untrained eye, it look pretty bad, but it surprisingly didn't hurt as bad as he thought it would. The blood from his wound had been charred and burnt to crisp while he was on fire, so it was basically cauterized at this point. He'd have to have someone with medical experience check it out when he got back to the others. He had heard some pretty nasty stories about what internal damage and infection could do to a person, so he could only hope that nothing too important had been cut inside him.
After inspecting his wound, he turns his gaze to the shore and the river they were bobbing along on. Where did that giant crocodile and their rider head off to? He didn't like the idea of them escaping so they could just terrorize and murder more people in the future. As he looks out, he notices a hawk approaching them, and he can't help but smile a little bit. He really liked birds, and hawks were some of his favorite.
SHAY
Approaching the source of the smoke, it becomes clear to Shay as she spots a charred vessel that she’d missed out on one interesting encounter. She takes in what she can from up high and quickly determines that whatever danger Harold and Rastrin were in has passed and thankfully they don’t bare any life threatening injuries she can see. Shitting her gaze some, she notices the crew watches both men with a mixture of awe and fear on their faces, and unsurprisingly neither seem too fond of the attention.
Shay lands onboard in time to hear Harold questioning a crew member she assumed to be important enough for getting information from. She returns to her elf form and forces herself to keep focused on her companions and not the dead bodies laying around, going to Rastrin who appeared less preoccupied at the moment. “I almost wish I’d been here to help. Were you attacked by these people?”