This post has potentially manipulated dice roll results.
12
Krackle tosses and turns inside of his small burrow as he sleeps on his small pack. Occasionally you hear what could be stiffed scream... or whimper... escape from the tiny hole in the ground as he thrashes about. The little kobold kicks and swings his arms as he rolls off of his tiny treasure pile and ends up wrapped up like a burrito in his robes laying in the loose dirt. He eventually settles down but seems to twitch occasionally until morning.
After reliving Vesper and checking on Krackle, Chrys settles down to begin her watch. All is quiet during the after midnight hours, except for the faint breeze that blows through the grass and the constant chirping of crickets and other insects that hide and frolic in the fields all around.
As she looks out over the horizon, she's able to see quite well, due to the faint light of the waning half moon overhead, but aside from the fireflies, her eyes pick up nothing that would signal a threat. At one point, she hears the hooting of an owl nearby, and is pretty sure that she sees it fly silently overhead.
Later in the night, Chrys looks back over at Krackle and sees that he is having a fitful sleep. He's been emitting small whimpers throughout the night, and as you look now, you see that he has rolled off from atop his backpack and is now lying curled up in the dirt, his body occasionally twitching with small jerks.
As she shifts her eyes back from her companions, something catches her eye. A small glint on the ground right near her feet. Looking more closely, Chrys can see that's a small shiny stone that's catching reflections from the moonlight. Picking it up, she can see that it's a semi translucent white and silver stone with a ghostly sheen of blue that seems to float beneath the surface like a tiny pool of glowing water. Her dwarven eyes easily recognize it as a moonstone.
When she sees the moon dip lower into the sky, she wakes Lumen and Kess up to take the early morning shift. They swap positions and the the two share the job of taking over the last. Lumen seems to have slept well, despite the tenuous situation, and feels quite rested and alert as he sits there and surveys the terrain all around and watches the sky begin to lighten up and eventually being to show the warm hues of pre-dawn.
Kess also feels rested after her trance, and they both watch the bright orange sun appear above the eastern horizon and notices that it's such beautiful sight. It's the first real sunrise that both of them have seen out in the open in a few days, and they're able to draw strength and confidence from the beautiful scene as it unfolds in front of them in a brand new day.
When the sun begins to climb higher into he sky, they wakes their companions up and begins preparations for another day of travel. As you all eat breakfast and pack up, you notice that Krackle is a little groggy and showing obvious signs of being tired, while the rest of you feel quite rested and refreshed after a good night's sleep out under the open sky.
"Hey guys, I don't think that Krackle got much sleep last night. Either he had some bad dreams or eating all of that stale food didn't go so well for him. "
Burning Tides of Chaos for advantage on this save: 17
"By the three-in-one, what a gorgeous sunrise," Kess would say with a smile, taking a moment to soak in the sun's warmth as it arose. "And the weather seems agreeable as well! Hopefully it will stay that way! Are you all ready to travel? Yartar awaits."
You all finish packing your gear and cleaning up your campsite, making sure that you leave virtually no trace that you were there, except for the matted down piles of grass, which will surely pop back up in a few hours.
After discussing over breakfast about how far it is to Yartar and how quickly you could get there, you agree to try and make the town in a single push. This will involve traveling at a faster pace than normal, with the tradeoff being that you may not be as perceptive or alert to your surroundings, and that you will no doubt be more tired when you arrive. Either way, you're looking at a long day on your feet, but at least the sun is out and you all feel pretty good.
A couple of you have sniffles, but your overall energy level is high. It's really nothing more than a light head cold, and certainly doesn't slow you down. Having spent a few hours in close quarters with a tribe of dirty goblins inside a foul, dingy underground temple a couple days ago, if there ever was a place to pick up some germs, that would be it. Exploring unclean, disease-ridden locations certainly comes with other hazards in addition to the constant threat of being killed by some horrid monster, even if this part of adventuring is not often talked about in regular tavern banter.
So, considering the distinct possibility of getting sick from a bunch of runny nosed goblins who may or may not be contagious with any number of possible diseases, you feel fortunate that you have strong enough constitutions to avoid such an inconvenience.
After wading back through the tall grass for a few hundred feet, you turn west once again and continue along on The Evermoor Way on your way to Yartar.
Vesper doesn't have any issue with the increased pace that the team is going at during this last day, since she's ready to be in Yartar and finished with this mask business. As she travels along, she keeps her pack in her hands, not having come all this way just to have her piece of the mask stolen in some last ditch effort by Krackle. Still she's curious if it caused him to have another dream. "Hey Krackle, did you have a bad dream last night?"
Krackle, on the other hand, seems to have picked up more than a cold. He begins wheezing and coughing early in the morning, and it lasts throughout the day. In addition, he's moving rather slowly, and just can't seem to keep up with the rest of you, no matter how he tries. It appears that he has definitely picked up some kind of infection or sickness, and it's affecting him in a much worse way than the rest of you.
He grabs his old battered cloak and secures it with the hood heavily over his head. He kneels down with his back to Krackle and nods to Kess and the others to place Krackle on his back, not his shoulders. He grabs hold of the bottom corners of the cloak and folds them up so Krackle's sitting in a little swaddle backpack made from the cloak. His hands pull the corners of the cloak over his shoulders, and Krackle's secured safely inside the cloak.
"More comfortable than a bag, and he doesn't have to try to walk fast. Krackle, just try to rest up in there, okay?"If it's cold, Lumen will cast prestidigitation to make the cloak pleasantly warm to ease the kobold's shivering.
"Where I'm from, he'd have been left behind to fend for himself or worse. We're better than that. I'll be better than that. The little numpty's still got his heart of gold in there somewhere so I guess we have to try. Chrys? Kess? Someone carry my pack if you don't mind. It's not the weight, it's one particular piece of cargo that burdens my mind."
He begins to trudge on to Yartar, keeping the fast pace with the rest of the group, trying not to bounce the kobold too much.
After an hour or so, he says, "so Dundragon? Or a temple? If so, which?"
Vespers Mage Hand will float over and grab the pack. It'll hold the bag in midair and move it along with her. "I don't think that what he has will kill him, so I think we can afford to go to Dundragon first. But if he gets worse on the way, we can stop at the temple."
"Thanks Luu...Luu... Lu-m-ACHEW!!" The kobold would say as he struggles to finish his statement before a large sneeze sends snot dripping from his snout. The tired kobold looks out from the half-orcs back and when Vesper asks if he had another dream, he kind of melts down into the cloak so that only his little snotty snout is visible. "Yes.... It was a dream I have had a bunch of times..." He would say with a sniffle. "My sister said it was from the day she found me." He would add as a tiny claw pops up and wipes his snout before sinking back down into the cloak. "My sister said that there used to be a grumpy shop keeper that sold lots of neat things back home. One day he was all excited because he had traded away a bunch of expensive trinkets for his very own golden dragon egg. A couple days later when my sister was walking past the shop she herd him shouting excitedly that it was hatching. She ran in the door just in time to see me pop out of the egg! I guess someone had tricked the merchant and had painted my egg gold. The merchant was soo mad that he picked me up and squeezed me really hard. My sister says that is how I got my name. When he squeezed me my whole body started to make a loud krackling sound in his hands before he threw me on the ground. Hellen said she could see I was still moving and took me home. She said that she thought that if she fixed me... maybe I could still turn into a golden dragon... and maybe I could help her and her family." The kobold finish and his snout dipped down into the cloak like a sinking ship. The sound of sniffling would could be heard from the ball sagging down inside the cloak "But I guess I am not a very good helper anymore."
By the Three-in-one... Kobold or not, to do something so callous to a defenseless newborn requires a blackened heart of stone. That merchant may not have been given the egg of a dragon, but he certainly behaves like any terrible Red or White I've heard of. And just as deserving of a shining blade through his greedy black pit of a heart, I'd wager. To crush a newborn in his arms... how cruel.
Listening to Krackle recall his birth, Kess could barely mask her horror at the events described and her raw anger towards the merchant on her face. It was true that kobolds were long thought to be pests, even dangerous in some parts of the north... but they had a right to live and breathe as most things do. To learn that Krackle's name came from the sound of a man strangling the life out of him as he sat defenseless and fresh from the egg was nothing short of horrifying. From the very moment he was brought into the world, it would seem that Kessdarra's little friend has faced suffering and pain.
And now, sickness aside, it would seem that something dark and ancient even beyond Tel'quessir reckoning had dug itself into their little friend, plaguing Krackle with nightmares and whispering temptations of greed and treachery into his ear, testing the will and patience of the entire band. There had long been legends across Toril that Kobolds were born of dragonblood, or something to that effect, and had Kess not been so keenly involved in events leading up to this point she would have been lead to believe it was perhaps an innate temptation to covetousness that most dragons seemed to suffer. But given the constant vigil they all had to keep, lest Krackle find his hands on that dreadful mask, she knew better.
Even so, despite all that his abilities had put them through in the last few days, hearing their little draconic companion crying and berating himself so forcefully pulled at Kessdarra's heartstrings. Without so much as a word, she jogged over to where Lumen stood, reaching into the cloak where Krackle was secreted away and pulled him into a gentle but warm hug.
"We're going to fix you up, okay, Krackle?" She said soothingly to Krackle in a gentle voice, almost like a mother trying to comfort her child. "You poor thing... you've been through much these past few days. Stop beating up on yourself. We all make mistakes, and it is good to acknowledge that, but not everything you have done these last few days was directly your choice; beating up on yourself is just going to make you feel worse, not better. We'll see Master Dundragon, or a goodly priest who will honor his vows, or whatever we need to do. We'll help you, Krackle. You don't have to go through this alone. At least, I won't.
"That being said... given what we're feeling right now, it may behoove us to purchase soap and tents in Yartar, the next chance we get, as well as see if we can see to a bath house. Heavens only know what was in that mine before us."
"Well, we'll see 'bout that,"Chrys says to Krackle. "I'm sure if we get ya to a healer to have a good look at ya, we can figure out how to get ya back on yer feet proper. An' I have somethin' that might make ya feel better,"she adds. "I'd like to think 'twas a gift from the Moonmaiden Selûne herself, an' I think it was meant for you,. She pulls out the small moonstone she found. "I know yer missin' that awful mask somethin' horrible, and ya ain't feelin' too well right now, but I want ya to have this stone and hold it close ta ya fer now. Think about yer friends, an' what it means to be a good one. Takin' care o' one another, an' helpin' each other out when we need it." She carefully places the moonstone in Krackle's palm and closes his fingers around it. "Maybe this'll still some o' that hunger in yer heart, and help ya hold on 'till we can get ya to some help."
Afterwards, she offers to take the pack off of Vesper's Mage Hand, should she be tired of maintaining the spell at any point in the journey.
Krackle would return Kess's hug the best he could. It would be noticeably weaker than the previous hugs given to her by the kobold, but it isn't due to lack of trying. The worn out kobolds droopy eyes would brighten a bit and he gives her a smile. After coughing and wiping his runny nose with the back of his clawed hand, he would sit up a bit straighter at the sight of the shiny gem. "Thanks Chrys!" he would say as he closes his claw tightly around the gem. He would hold it very close to his face.. staring at it with unblinking eyes before closing them tightly and holding the gem to his forehead. "Maybe we could make a mask out of these? Maybe if I had a new nice mask... I could stop thinking about the other one.." he would say before coughing a bit more.
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Chrys nods in agreement, casting Protection from Evil and Good over Vesper.
(Lumen had volunteered for first watch but is happy to take third watch.)
Lumen perception: 23
Vesper accepts Chrys' spell and goes to sleep.
Xenophon: Topaz Dragonborn Fighter (ixi's Dragon of Icespire Peak)
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12
Krackle tosses and turns inside of his small burrow as he sleeps on his small pack. Occasionally you hear what could be stiffed scream... or whimper... escape from the tiny hole in the ground as he thrashes about. The little kobold kicks and swings his arms as he rolls off of his tiny treasure pile and ends up wrapped up like a burrito in his robes laying in the loose dirt. He eventually settles down but seems to twitch occasionally until morning.
Kess will take the last watch: 18
Xenophon: Topaz Dragonborn Fighter (ixi's Dragon of Icespire Peak)
More
After reliving Vesper and checking on Krackle, Chrys settles down to begin her watch. All is quiet during the after midnight hours, except for the faint breeze that blows through the grass and the constant chirping of crickets and other insects that hide and frolic in the fields all around.
As she looks out over the horizon, she's able to see quite well, due to the faint light of the waning half moon overhead, but aside from the fireflies, her eyes pick up nothing that would signal a threat. At one point, she hears the hooting of an owl nearby, and is pretty sure that she sees it fly silently overhead.
Later in the night, Chrys looks back over at Krackle and sees that he is having a fitful sleep. He's been emitting small whimpers throughout the night, and as you look now, you see that he has rolled off from atop his backpack and is now lying curled up in the dirt, his body occasionally twitching with small jerks.
As she shifts her eyes back from her companions, something catches her eye. A small glint on the ground right near her feet. Looking more closely, Chrys can see that's a small shiny stone that's catching reflections from the moonlight. Picking it up, she can see that it's a semi translucent white and silver stone with a ghostly sheen of blue that seems to float beneath the surface like a tiny pool of glowing water. Her dwarven eyes easily recognize it as a moonstone.
When she sees the moon dip lower into the sky, she wakes Lumen and Kess up to take the early morning shift. They swap positions and the the two share the job of taking over the last. Lumen seems to have slept well, despite the tenuous situation, and feels quite rested and alert as he sits there and surveys the terrain all around and watches the sky begin to lighten up and eventually being to show the warm hues of pre-dawn.
Kess also feels rested after her trance, and they both watch the bright orange sun appear above the eastern horizon and notices that it's such beautiful sight. It's the first real sunrise that both of them have seen out in the open in a few days, and they're able to draw strength and confidence from the beautiful scene as it unfolds in front of them in a brand new day.
When the sun begins to climb higher into he sky, they wakes their companions up and begins preparations for another day of travel. As you all eat breakfast and pack up, you notice that Krackle is a little groggy and showing obvious signs of being tired, while the rest of you feel quite rested and refreshed after a good night's sleep out under the open sky.
"Hey guys, I don't think that Krackle got much sleep last night. Either he had some bad dreams or eating all of that stale food didn't go so well for him. "
Burning Tides of Chaos for advantage on this save: 17
Xenophon: Topaz Dragonborn Fighter (ixi's Dragon of Icespire Peak)
More
"By the three-in-one, what a gorgeous sunrise," Kess would say with a smile, taking a moment to soak in the sun's warmth as it arose. "And the weather seems agreeable as well! Hopefully it will stay that way! Are you all ready to travel? Yartar awaits."
((Kess CON save! 15 ))
(Sorry thought we were rolling in the OOC thread - 14 CON save for Lumen.)
"Ready as ever," Chrys agrees.
CON save: 13
You all finish packing your gear and cleaning up your campsite, making sure that you leave virtually no trace that you were there, except for the matted down piles of grass, which will surely pop back up in a few hours.
After discussing over breakfast about how far it is to Yartar and how quickly you could get there, you agree to try and make the town in a single push. This will involve traveling at a faster pace than normal, with the tradeoff being that you may not be as perceptive or alert to your surroundings, and that you will no doubt be more tired when you arrive. Either way, you're looking at a long day on your feet, but at least the sun is out and you all feel pretty good.
A couple of you have sniffles, but your overall energy level is high. It's really nothing more than a light head cold, and certainly doesn't slow you down. Having spent a few hours in close quarters with a tribe of dirty goblins inside a foul, dingy underground temple a couple days ago, if there ever was a place to pick up some germs, that would be it. Exploring unclean, disease-ridden locations certainly comes with other hazards in addition to the constant threat of being killed by some horrid monster, even if this part of adventuring is not often talked about in regular tavern banter.
So, considering the distinct possibility of getting sick from a bunch of runny nosed goblins who may or may not be contagious with any number of possible diseases, you feel fortunate that you have strong enough constitutions to avoid such an inconvenience.
After wading back through the tall grass for a few hundred feet, you turn west once again and continue along on The Evermoor Way on your way to Yartar.
Vesper doesn't have any issue with the increased pace that the team is going at during this last day, since she's ready to be in Yartar and finished with this mask business. As she travels along, she keeps her pack in her hands, not having come all this way just to have her piece of the mask stolen in some last ditch effort by Krackle. Still she's curious if it caused him to have another dream. "Hey Krackle, did you have a bad dream last night?"
Xenophon: Topaz Dragonborn Fighter (ixi's Dragon of Icespire Peak)
More
Krackle, on the other hand, seems to have picked up more than a cold. He begins wheezing and coughing early in the morning, and it lasts throughout the day. In addition, he's moving rather slowly, and just can't seem to keep up with the rest of you, no matter how he tries. It appears that he has definitely picked up some kind of infection or sickness, and it's affecting him in a much worse way than the rest of you.
Lumen covers his eyes with his hand and sighs.
He grabs his old battered cloak and secures it with the hood heavily over his head. He kneels down with his back to Krackle and nods to Kess and the others to place Krackle on his back, not his shoulders. He grabs hold of the bottom corners of the cloak and folds them up so Krackle's sitting in a little swaddle backpack made from the cloak. His hands pull the corners of the cloak over his shoulders, and Krackle's secured safely inside the cloak.
"More comfortable than a bag, and he doesn't have to try to walk fast. Krackle, just try to rest up in there, okay?" If it's cold, Lumen will cast prestidigitation to make the cloak pleasantly warm to ease the kobold's shivering.
"Where I'm from, he'd have been left behind to fend for himself or worse. We're better than that. I'll be better than that. The little numpty's still got his heart of gold in there somewhere so I guess we have to try. Chrys? Kess? Someone carry my pack if you don't mind. It's not the weight, it's one particular piece of cargo that burdens my mind."
He begins to trudge on to Yartar, keeping the fast pace with the rest of the group, trying not to bounce the kobold too much.
After an hour or so, he says, "so Dundragon? Or a temple? If so, which?"
Vespers Mage Hand will float over and grab the pack. It'll hold the bag in midair and move it along with her. "I don't think that what he has will kill him, so I think we can afford to go to Dundragon first. But if he gets worse on the way, we can stop at the temple."
Xenophon: Topaz Dragonborn Fighter (ixi's Dragon of Icespire Peak)
More
"Thanks Luu...Luu... Lu-m-ACHEW!!" The kobold would say as he struggles to finish his statement before a large sneeze sends snot dripping from his snout. The tired kobold looks out from the half-orcs back and when Vesper asks if he had another dream, he kind of melts down into the cloak so that only his little snotty snout is visible. "Yes.... It was a dream I have had a bunch of times..." He would say with a sniffle. "My sister said it was from the day she found me." He would add as a tiny claw pops up and wipes his snout before sinking back down into the cloak. "My sister said that there used to be a grumpy shop keeper that sold lots of neat things back home. One day he was all excited because he had traded away a bunch of expensive trinkets for his very own golden dragon egg. A couple days later when my sister was walking past the shop she herd him shouting excitedly that it was hatching. She ran in the door just in time to see me pop out of the egg! I guess someone had tricked the merchant and had painted my egg gold. The merchant was soo mad that he picked me up and squeezed me really hard. My sister says that is how I got my name. When he squeezed me my whole body started to make a loud krackling sound in his hands before he threw me on the ground. Hellen said she could see I was still moving and took me home. She said that she thought that if she fixed me... maybe I could still turn into a golden dragon... and maybe I could help her and her family." The kobold finish and his snout dipped down into the cloak like a sinking ship. The sound of sniffling would could be heard from the ball sagging down inside the cloak "But I guess I am not a very good helper anymore."
By the Three-in-one... Kobold or not, to do something so callous to a defenseless newborn requires a blackened heart of stone. That merchant may not have been given the egg of a dragon, but he certainly behaves like any terrible Red or White I've heard of. And just as deserving of a shining blade through his greedy black pit of a heart, I'd wager. To crush a newborn in his arms... how cruel.
Listening to Krackle recall his birth, Kess could barely mask her horror at the events described and her raw anger towards the merchant on her face. It was true that kobolds were long thought to be pests, even dangerous in some parts of the north... but they had a right to live and breathe as most things do. To learn that Krackle's name came from the sound of a man strangling the life out of him as he sat defenseless and fresh from the egg was nothing short of horrifying. From the very moment he was brought into the world, it would seem that Kessdarra's little friend has faced suffering and pain.
And now, sickness aside, it would seem that something dark and ancient even beyond Tel'quessir reckoning had dug itself into their little friend, plaguing Krackle with nightmares and whispering temptations of greed and treachery into his ear, testing the will and patience of the entire band. There had long been legends across Toril that Kobolds were born of dragonblood, or something to that effect, and had Kess not been so keenly involved in events leading up to this point she would have been lead to believe it was perhaps an innate temptation to covetousness that most dragons seemed to suffer. But given the constant vigil they all had to keep, lest Krackle find his hands on that dreadful mask, she knew better.
Even so, despite all that his abilities had put them through in the last few days, hearing their little draconic companion crying and berating himself so forcefully pulled at Kessdarra's heartstrings. Without so much as a word, she jogged over to where Lumen stood, reaching into the cloak where Krackle was secreted away and pulled him into a gentle but warm hug.
"We're going to fix you up, okay, Krackle?" She said soothingly to Krackle in a gentle voice, almost like a mother trying to comfort her child. "You poor thing... you've been through much these past few days. Stop beating up on yourself. We all make mistakes, and it is good to acknowledge that, but not everything you have done these last few days was directly your choice; beating up on yourself is just going to make you feel worse, not better. We'll see Master Dundragon, or a goodly priest who will honor his vows, or whatever we need to do. We'll help you, Krackle. You don't have to go through this alone. At least, I won't.
"That being said... given what we're feeling right now, it may behoove us to purchase soap and tents in Yartar, the next chance we get, as well as see if we can see to a bath house. Heavens only know what was in that mine before us."
"Well, we'll see 'bout that," Chrys says to Krackle. "I'm sure if we get ya to a healer to have a good look at ya, we can figure out how to get ya back on yer feet proper. An' I have somethin' that might make ya feel better," she adds. "I'd like to think 'twas a gift from the Moonmaiden Selûne herself, an' I think it was meant for you,. She pulls out the small moonstone she found. "I know yer missin' that awful mask somethin' horrible, and ya ain't feelin' too well right now, but I want ya to have this stone and hold it close ta ya fer now. Think about yer friends, an' what it means to be a good one. Takin' care o' one another, an' helpin' each other out when we need it." She carefully places the moonstone in Krackle's palm and closes his fingers around it. "Maybe this'll still some o' that hunger in yer heart, and help ya hold on 'till we can get ya to some help."
Afterwards, she offers to take the pack off of Vesper's Mage Hand, should she be tired of maintaining the spell at any point in the journey.
Krackle would return Kess's hug the best he could. It would be noticeably weaker than the previous hugs given to her by the kobold, but it isn't due to lack of trying. The worn out kobolds droopy eyes would brighten a bit and he gives her a smile. After coughing and wiping his runny nose with the back of his clawed hand, he would sit up a bit straighter at the sight of the shiny gem. "Thanks Chrys!" he would say as he closes his claw tightly around the gem. He would hold it very close to his face.. staring at it with unblinking eyes before closing them tightly and holding the gem to his forehead. "Maybe we could make a mask out of these? Maybe if I had a new nice mask... I could stop thinking about the other one.." he would say before coughing a bit more.