Kelsin hands the potion to Morbrukk

"Well bottoms up"   *Morbrukk takes a sip*

Morbrukk feels a slight tingle all through his muscles as the magic courses through him. Though not entirely sure why, Morbrukk feels like he could go outside and climb the sheer face of the nearest mountain with very little trouble at all.

Tucking the treasure away and setting the watch order for the night, everyone is a little surprised when Kyomi asked to have the last watch, instead of her customary middle of the night guard duty. Strix was the first to wake, being accustomed to rising early to start her day with prayer and silent meditation. Upon waking with a slight shiver, Strix saw that the fire was nothing but embers, and Kyomi was nowhwere to be seen. In the place where Kyomi had setup her bedroll and blanket with a rock as a paperweight, was the scroll of Suggestion she'd identified the evening before. Strix grabbed the scroll and saw that Kyomi had used a nib of charcoal pulled from the fire to scrawl a hasty message. "My friends, I am sorry to leave you like this, but yesterday while we traveled I received a magical message from my father's master at arms. My father is missing, and I would not be able to live with myself, if I did not at least attempt to go home to help find him. I wish you all the best of luck and gods blessings on your mission. I hope you will forgive my stealthy exit, I didn't know how to tell you all that I needed to go. Light find you, Kyomi."

Strix put the scroll with the scrawled message back under the rock where she found it, and immediately added fuel to the fire, stoking it to bring up a bright flame. As the others groggily awoke and noticed Kyomi was not there, Strix would point them to the note on the scroll.

Strix says a quiet prayer to Saxswyn to guide Kyomi on her new quest.  "Kyomi will be missed, but I can't blame her for going to her father's aid.  I've no doubt that we'll be fine."

"Yes she will be missed but we must now press on."

"Well she may gone, but we must continue" says Kelsin. She will shoulder her pack and stands ready to hit the trail again. 

*While the others were talking Harbeck had set up his brewer’s set and gotten to work. In a small dark oak barrel hanging from his belt rum had been fermenting since they left the fort. Pouring out the rum into his cast iron pot he mixed it with some butter, a pinch of cinnamon, sugar, and salt from his rations. After stirring it for a bit the drink was ready. Separating the concoction into 4 of his 5 tankards he gave one to each of his comrades. Raising his glass of buttered rum for a toast he finally spoke.* “To Kyomi, may she be successful with her new mission.” 

Kelsin takes the offered drink and is surprised by how good it taste. "Compliments to the brew master" says Kelsin

*Morbrukk takes the brew and raises it* "To our comrade! May she complete her goal! *Morbrukk then downs the drink*

Strix raises her glass in a silent toast, and then tosses back the brew.  "Delicious as always," she says with a nod to Harbeck.

Harbeck's spirits always seemed to help the group get their travels underfoot in high ... spirits. Today's buttered rum was no different, giving everyone a nice warm feeling in their bellies, that helped to make eating the hardtack rations a bit more enjoyable. Once again Aldellion had blessed the group with a high warm sun, few clouds, an only a slight breeze. The entire morning of marching up and down the hilly slopes of the Druraka range went by fairly quickly, and it was just as the group was about to find a spot to sit and have a midday meal that the horizon was broken by a column of dark smoke. Whatever was causing the smoke was a fair distance away and on the back side of a somewhat steep hill dotted with evergreen trees. While this part of the Druraka mountains wasn't entirely devoid of settlements, those settlements were few and far between, and neither Strix nor Harbeck remembered there being any settlements this far from civilization. It might be nothing, but it might be something, and if it was something, it might be something that they would want to know about ahead of time, before it turned into something else.

"There is smoke on the horizon. That does not bode well. I believe we should check it out." says Kelsin. She starts heading towards the smoke.

"I agree.  The fewer surprises we have to face, the better."

Having agreed to divert from the path to head over the distant ridge and investigate the smoke, the party found a relatively well traveled game trail that lead in the same general direction, and took to it. It was during the trudge up the somewhat steep hillside densely populated by evergreen trees of various kinds, that the party felt and heard the first signs of what they would come to find out later had caused the smoke. While the group was following a zig in their zig-zagging trail the ground beneath them suddenly shook with a tremulous force, and then the relative silence of the natural world was shattered by a bone-chilling, monstrous roar that itself could be felt vibrating through the ground. Seconds later the sun was blotted out by a great shadow, and all four of the companions dodged toward and started all but hugging the nearest tree trunk they could find. Soaring danger close to the tops of the trees above them the sky was suddenly dominated by the form of a red dragon. The massive creature swooped down the hill just above the trees, and then flapped its wings, gaining height and flying off into the western distance. For the nonce the entire group stood perfectly still and said nothing. When the initial shock of having seen a creature of pure fantastical myth, creatures that had only recently been seen alive in their flesh to prove the legends true, within a bowshot of their own bodies wore off, everyone breathed an audible and heavy sigh.

"Light preserve us..." Strix finally whispered.

After it seemed that everyone had proper time to process what they'd just seen, heard, and felt, the group had a renewed sense of urgency to crest the ridge of the hill and see from whence came the column of black smoke. When they finally crested the ridge-top the fears that had begun to settle in after seeing the dragon fly overhead were realized. Down in the valley below them an area of the ground was scarred and scorched, every ounce of snow in the blast radius was melted, and even the wet grass underneath had been burnt to ash. That wasn't what had caused the column of smoke, though. No, that truth was much worse. In the center of the burnt circle there was a still burning pile of bodies. Even from this distance Morbrukk could see that two of the charred carcasses were white-furred sabre-tooth tigers, the preferred mount of the D'rak war captains. Beyond the burnt area, marching in an east by northeasterly direction was a group of at least a dozen dragonborn geared for war. They wouldn't be able to know for sure until they got closer and were able to get a closer look at the pile, but it appeared as though the dragonborn and their dragon ally had just destroyed an Orc raiding party.

*Veins bulge in Morbrukks head* "They dare attack my people."

Strix lays her hand gently on Morbrukk's shoulder and stands silently for a moment before speaking gently.  "There is a time for anger and a time for vengeance - I know ye' want it, and I promise ye'll have ye're chance - but, that time is not right now.  There is no way that the four of us can hope to claim victory against that force.  This is exactly the reason this mission is so important - to ensure we can defend against a force that has a dragon at their command.  Once they are at a safe distance we can honor your dead brethren in whatever manner ye' choose."

 "These are dangerous foes if they have a Dragon as an ally. I also agree that we should wait and learn all we can of them" says Kelsin.

She will wait for the dragonborn and dragon to leave before approaching the dead.

Watching until the dragonborn unit disappeared over a distant ridge, the group finally made their way down the hillside to the valley below and out of the trees to the snow covered plain of tussocky grass. The stench of burnt flesh was everywhere, and the closer the group got to the pile of smoldering bodies, the more apparent it became that what happened here was exactly what they'd thought. The charred metal weapons that couldn't be burned by the fire were all of D'rakish make, and the tusks on the skulls of the various corpses were a dead giveaway, literally. Morbrukk took some solace in the fact that there were also a number of dragonborn corpses on the burn pile as well. His kin had taken some of their enemies with them to the grave. Judging by the number of corpses the dragon had been the difference in the fight, though, as there were more than a dozen orc corpses, and their sabre-tooth tiger mounts, but only a handful of dragonborn bodies were in the pile.

Strix and Harbeck shared a look. It was a boon to the dwarves that one less D'rak raiding party was traversing the Druraka range, so they really couldn't be too upset about their deaths. Even so, it was more than a bit frightening to think about an army that had no fear of enraging the D'rak. During The Goblin Wars, the dwarves had learned just how tenacious and deadly the orcs could be when organized for war. That the dragonborn army cared little about angering them, meant they didn't consider the D'rak a threat, and that was a frightening thought indeed. Especially to a group whose sole mission was to see if their defenses were ready for a war with that very army. Looking at the destructive scene around them, all the dwarves could think was, "no, they weren't ready, and they'd probably never be ready." The reality of things started to settle in to Strix and Harbeck's hearts, then. It would take the full force of the armies of multiple kingdoms to defeat such a foe. Perhaps it was time for Queen Runondi to return to the negotiating table with Thorain and figure out exactly how to set their bigoted history aside for the common good?

Of course nobody standing next to the burning pile of D'rak corpses could do anything about that now, except perhaps inform their superiors of what they'd witnessed. Perhaps even that needed to wait, though. This little diversion had taken the group far from their original path, and twilight would be falling soon enough. It was time to decide what to do and where to go from here.

"Morbrukk, is there anything ye'd like to do for ye're brothers in arms?  We'll be needing to find shelter for the night and return to our original course as quickly as possible."

"I also need to inform Gryld."  She adds softly.