AAR: [10M] Welcome Home Gift (2021-04-23 23:00 GMT)

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sigfriedmcwild
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Re: AAR: [10M] Welcome Home Gift (2021-04-23 23:00 GMT)

Post by sigfriedmcwild » Fri May 21, 2021 10:18 pm

From "The Skies of Barsaive", as penned by Norg, Brother of Earth and Sky, Corsair of Throal

Now that Azurea has learnt of her parents, she has been frantically trying to find a "Welcome Home" gift to bring them (I am not going to engage with the issue that she should be the one receiving a welcome home gift for the moment). Her idea is to go find the remains of the thirteen warriors that carried her to safety and bring them back to the moot.

Thorkell and Moe joined us on this caper although Moe spend the first couple of days bringing up reasons why this was a bad idea: "how will the people that cast you out react", "how will the families of those warriors feel", and so on.

We set off towards a locale known as "the valley of shadows", near the Ice Claw moot. A couple of days into the trip we finally realised that Vralino was tagging along with us, with barely any idea of what was going on. Sometimes I worry the loss of her father may have affected her more than we expected.

In about a week we reached the entrance the valley, a narrow crevasse that we almost missed. The locals spun tales of the place being cursed, adventurers never returning, the usual "cursed locale" stuff. Undeterred we made our way in and, I must admit, "valley of shadows" did fit the place. The light was robbed of colour and brightness, everything was just a tad too dim and dingy.

Moe and Thorkell spotted the signs of some large "things" moving in the area, not to mention the signs of strong astral corruption. Soon we ran into a group of crakjaw gnashers, the giant two mouthed ones we fought in the vision. We snuck up on them and took them down without too much trouble, even if one of them tried to run away with Vralino (holding her with its tongue)

Looking around the area, we spotted the remains of eleven skeletons hanging from a tree, which seemed to be holding the spirits of some of the dead warriors who proceeded to taunt and torment Azurea. Before she suffered a complete breakdown, Moe mentioned that this may be an effect similar to the Unseen Voices spell and Thorkell dispelled it with surprising ease. Further examination of the bones revealed them to be just bones, but they were not casting a shadow, something that we could unanimously agree was "a bad sign".

We started looking around trying to find the caster of the spell when more voices started talking to us giving us directions, Vralino tried to go the "wrong" way and somehow found herself following the instructions anyway. Shortly we reached a river that looked familiar from the vision. Something was roosting on a nearby tree and ancient weapons were scattered in the river.

As we approached the shapes in the tree resolved into something roughly troll shaped and Azurea and I were hit with a wave of despair so strong it actually made me cough and cry blood.

Let me emphasize this again, we did not get hurt and therefore sad. We were so sad out eyes cried blood and our lungs ruptured. An experience I do not recommend to anyone. I managed to keep going and moved away from the tree to help vralino with the animated armours that had popped out of the river, but Azurea dropped to the ground and Thorkell had to stop one of the troll shades from finishing her.

Eventually we destroyed all four horror constructs and found a helm hidden inside the tree. The helm was a thread item and likely belonged to one of the warriors. Moe believed that the helm was placed there by some sort of collector and other artefacts are probably scattered around the valley.

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