The Road to Mapleton (13Nov04)
Our second session and the uniqueness continues.
Neither Shockwaver (Yenao the paladin) nor Niko (Headsmasher the barbarian turned human cleric of Yelir) showed up for the game. Since Yenao had not joined the party in-game, his absence was easily dismissed. However, Headsmasher was a member of the group. Luckily, Niko and I had worked out that Headsmasher had wandered away in the several days between his deal with Gahaven and the group's departure from Thornscape. It was later suggested that the half-orc had drowned in a well. Since this would have occurred after the paat rty left Thornscape, it remains to be seen whether or not it is true.
So, at the end of the week, Gahaven, Braxton, and Kazak gathered at the Fox & Potion Tavern where they had first met and finally set out for Mapleton, a two day journey by foot. Most of their travel was occupied with conversation. Oddly enough, the disparate group began with natural philosphy and progressed from there to a more personable, if short, discussion of their homelands (except for Kazak, who seems rather uncomfortable with the subject of where he is from and why he left).
By the afternoon, conversation had wound down to silence until they encountered a curious old mill. Built not too far from the road at an almost circular bend in the Silverrock River, the mill housed an unusual half-elf miller whom they only later found out was named Cyndel. Due to some very rude, but not exactly unwarranted, comments by Braxton and Kazak, the miller was put off by the group and gave them the cold shoulder. You see, Cyndel had webbed hands and feet. And when they arrived, he was on his way to the millpond for a swim. Gahaven briefly suspected that the "fishman", as they later dubbed him, had committed some foul deed but could find nothing to support his suspicion. Not too far down the road, they met a peasant farmer headed to the mill with grain to grind. Most everything they know of the miller came from his freely flowing words of frustration and explanation.
The trio continued along the road until dusk. Deciding to make camp, they headed into the forest to hunt some game for dinner and, thanks to Gahaven's prowess with the bow, managed to bag a rabbit and two quail. Braxton discovered a fresh stream nearby for water. As they settled in for the night, Gahaven took the first and only watch. Soon after the others had fallen asleep, the elf's keen ears picked up the sound of a voice in the forest to the north. A halfling riding a large dog soon entered the illumination of the firelight, instantly waking Kazak from his light slumber. He explained his name was Briar and he was looking for a fox that was injured by a poorly set trap. After some short discussion to ensure he was not a scout for the bandits, the group agreed to help him if for no other reason that to be neighborly. Kazak decided to wait at camp while the others went searching.
Briar's companion, Dane, picked up the scent and tracked it several hundred feet away, across the road. There, scared and injured, the fox was beset by a pair of stick-like creatures latered identified as twig blights. The twig blights attacked Braxton with their poisonous claws but did little more than anger the dwarf, who shattered one with a single blow from his mace. Between a stab from Gahaven's shortsword and a strike by Briar's spell-enhanced quarterstaff, the other soon followed its fellow into pieces and, from there, into the dying fire back at camp.
Conversation followed in front of the warm for some time before everyone realized that bed would be prudent. Awaking the next morning, the now four-strong party prepared to travel the remainder of the distance to Mapleton and begin their search for the bandits.
posted by Eldric IV | 11/14/2004 02:17:00 PM
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