Blackened Forest: Surveys & Survivors.

[Spearmint]

This thread is for the Expedition led by Durgo Brightboon, supported by Fydmar, Bro' Symeon of St Ygg's and mage Genaromes.

They are helped by mercenary hires, Cara Crow , a skilled frontierswoman ranger and Squirrel, a halfling acting as camp cook and torchbearer.

You have included in your equipment some extra dozen spider silk spools, two arachnid entangling nets and two spider wrangling lances. This equipment, along with two tents and a week's supply of rations and waterskins is carried by BabeRuth the dwarf's pack mule.

The expedition may leave town on June 28th 1066.

I shortened the waiting downtime so as to synchronise expeditions to be as concurrent as possible rather than have too many overlaps.

I will open this thread once downtime activity is concluded and all participants have 'ayed' or 'nay-sayed' to the suggestion.

[Spearmint]

Surveying the Blackened Forest, Duchy of Aerik.

June 28th 1066.

The comrades gather in the Helix Market Square, equipped with silk harvesting gear, favour from the Chapel and the scouting skills of a mercenary.

Most breakfast on honeyed porridge with fresh cream, hot sausages and runny boiled eggs wrapped in seeded unleavened breads and washed down with a half tankard of stout ale. Durgo, munching for two last night commits to a day of fasting, so uses the breakfast hour to pray in the chapel. He hopes his prayers for divine favour are heard.

With "Amens" or "burp" concluding pre-trek rituals, the group set off.

You have recently travelled this way before, two weeks earlier following the sane westwards trade route out of the village then turning north up reaching the most significant of the deer trails.

After about two and a half miles, an hour of walking, you come to the fringe of the village surrounds, the last small farms and frontier cabins built in cleared patchworks of deforested land or cultivated arable plots. Beyond this the environment is less 'civilized', the forest a deep unchanging wilderness with tall coniferous trees reaching high and spreading bracken shrubs fighting to monopolise the faint rays of sunlight which filter down. The ground is flat but increasingly boggy before rising to undulating hills that extend beyond the unexplored, northern frontier. Soft ground underfoot, not quite swamp like but certainly enough to sink your footsteps ankle deep in places, you squelch along in the furrows made by trickling rivulets of draining waters. With the rise and fall of the water levels, the soil erosion exposes lots of tree roots, giving the impression the trunks cling to the ground by grasping clawed hands.

There is a very thin trail, likely a deer path which is followed over the most solid ground, meandering around natural obstacles, avoiding hollows, stagnant pools or dense copses. The air is filled with gnats, birdsong, a swampy musk. No worthwhile spider silk hanging from the tree boughs, though you see many webs glinting with morning dew and a few displaying the dry husks of blood drained victims. Large birds, a baboon, giant bees the length of a sword; thankfully no spiders.

After a while the miners stop and one points towards an area with more exotic flora, bluebells and white speckled lilies, assorted anemones and snapdragons. The quartet start to pull some up and twist the stalks into a bouquet. After a few more minutes the deer path is joined by another which once taken leads to a small clearing. In the midst is a tree shaped like a naked woman stretching out her arms.

The tree must be twice the height of a man and is wide of girth. If the figure was a life-like representation, then whoever she was, she must have been a giant.

Despite stories of foxes, owls and other woodland creatures that gather here, the grove is quiet. The remnants of bouquets tied with ribbons placed around the tree woman's roots.

Nearby a young Apple sapling buds, the fruit rosy red. An old campsite, whose hearth of stones set in a ring to contain a small fire has embers long since burned out. A few twigs rigged to hold a cooking pot now hold a single arrow which points to the northwest. Not the direction you would take to the quarry.

The Lady of the Forest seems an obvious place to pass again. Certainly Cara Crow favours the place though she has a very pluralistic outlook. "I pray to all gods and none. I pay my respects to all men but bow before none". She says, twisting a few vines into a wreath that she hangs on a low bough. Squirrel pulls some fruit from the apple tree planted nearby, biting a rosy and crisp one in half. "Very nice. Much better than wild crabapples." she feeds the core to BabeRuth who gobbles it up.

There is no evidence of the camp that was here. New grasses, verdant and green, grow over the spot, the stones scattered rather than just grown over as if picked up and cast aside.

actions and comments Fydmar, Bro' Symeon, Genaromes, Durgo.

[Cwreando]

Durgo

Durgo plots this all out using his cartography kit as they go along with Gen's tutelage, more as a means to get use to do it than the necessity of having this part of the trip put to map. When he sees the more exotic flora, bluebells and white speckled lilies, assorted anemones and snapdragons. He starts to pull some up and twist the stalks into a bouquet.

"I am a follower of Futura, St. Ygg. There is no harm in respecting what is here for what it is", comments Durgo.

Durgo look at Gen, "Gen there have been others who have not done so, and the forest remembers their actions. It is your choice though and none here will slight you for not providing an offering."

Durgo will keep a watch on their surroundings a bit more alert in this area going forward.

[scottjen]

Fydmar
Makes a few vines/grasses into a wreath and hangs it on a branch, saying May the Lady smile upon our small acts.
After all, we survived some close calls last time.

[Cwreando]

Durgo

"Fydmar is correct. Our last outing was fraught with danger almost the whole way. There were times I thought this was maybe it for our group. We prevailed then as we will this time."

Bolstered by his training and skill advancement with new armor.

"We really need to get some armor with the ability to absorb those willow wisp attacks too. I'd need to perhaps learn how their armorer fitted their armor and adapt it to ours maybe.....Back to reality it is. Gen is this ok so far on the Cartography from Helix to here? Perhaps your skilled eye can adjust it to be more accurate?"

[DrRenfield]

Brother Symeon

Symeon will take a moment of respectful silence, but will make no offering.

To Durgo: Was it the gnomeish armor that shielded our guide, or did he employ some invocation?

[Cwreando]

Durgo

"I think it was the armor itself that provided the protection, Brother. I'm glad the chapel finally let you join us."

[DrRenfield]

Brother Symeon

As am I, lad. If I am to serve St Ygg as an effective servant, I require challenge.

"Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance."

[Spearmint]

I will wait on a post for Genaromes and then update tomorrow evening.

As to Geojimali's armour, it was noted as a crafted mithril chain-shirt and his resistance was probably related to an enhanced trait rather than an invoked spell. The Svirfneblin foreman did cast spells though, a CLW, which should point you to him being of a certain 'class' in persuasion.

[Cwreando]

Drugo

OOC - Thanks for the clarification on the trait probably being the factor for the --- As to Geojimali's armour, it was noted as a crafted mithril chain-shirt and his resistance was probably related to an enhanced trait rather than an invoked spell. The Svirfneblin foreman did cast spells though, a CLW, which should point you to him being of a certain 'class' in persuasion.

Pause it is.

[kwll]

Durgo

"Gen is this ok so far on the Cartography from Helix to here? Perhaps your skilled eye can adjust it to be more accurate?"

Genaromes looks at Durgo's work with a serious eye for while. "It is not too bad, you are a quick study! Let me perform a few corrections though." Then he goes about slightly modifying a few lines here and there to make the map more accurate.

"You seem to have experienced quite some adventures. Willow wisps you say? What was that about exactly?" he adds while performing his task.

[Cwreando]

Durgo

"What a story indeed. Durgo while staying focused on their travels and surroundings tells the story of their run in with the willow wisp."

viewtopic.php?p=653563#p653563

[Spearmint]

Surveying the Blackened Forest, Duchy of Aerik.

June 28th 1066.

Taking time to 'pay respects' in the forest grove, several of the team pick wild flowers and offer a pray for favour in their exploration. Certainly this small acreage has more providence to blossoming flora than the surrounding forest and you notice the distinct lack of spider webs here which although not widespread, the Orb Weaver webs are generally commonplace.

The map production is checked for accuracy, cartography is an artisan craft. While you look at where the grove is in relation to other known features (Helix, the Herne Ring, the Quarry) another thought comes to mind which links in to your wider mission.

The two missing children of Rayo Paterson. What you know of him is that he was a lumberjack labourer and the actual logging camp is just a few miles away, further west in the trail towards Crooked Yew. It is out of your way if you are going due north to the Quarry and Sinkhole but a thought comes to mind the children fleeing a burning home might take refuge in cabins where their father once worked? They might have shelter and basics of remnant supplies to survive frugally a few weeks. It is a possibility that up until now, no one has raised.

is this something you would consider to explore? . The logging camp was first encountered here:

https://www.unseenservant.us/forum/view ... 68#p555668

The brief respite over, Cara Crow sets to lead the way in your direction of choice.

actions discuss any merits to the above and give me a group decision.

[Cwreando]

Durgo

Durgo says...pausing as if recalling something, "Yes. I believe we should check into these cabins. I think the timing lends itself to the possibility the kids could be there. If I remember correctly, they went missing around the middle of May. We should at least rule out any possibility that the kids might be there. It is part of the reason we have trekked out here. The kids are the more important part of the mission. The silk and gnolls are only if we got there before heading further north past the quarry to look for the gnolls and second entrance to the cavern. Shall we go investigate these cabins."

[DrRenfield]

Brother Symeon

I agree wholeheartedly. The safe recovery of the children is the utmost priority.

[kwll]

"Same with me, the children first. Also, I haven't been there and it would be a good opportunity to include the place into the map." agrees the mage.

[scottjen]

Fydmar
Going to the cabins is fine with me. We should keep our eyes open for spider webs on the way.

[Spearmint]

Trek to the Old Logging Camp.

It may seem to be out if the way but in context of the overall mission, the decision to sweep the logging site in case it was used as a refuge seems a good one. The quickest way to the now abandoned works is back tracking to the westward trail that leads to Crooked Yew.

If you look on the regional hex map. The westward trail follows the line on the hexes that divide forest from moor. The camp is located 'two lines' along, at the junction of the south east lines to the forest hex.

For the last three months work at the logging camp has ceased since the place was overwhelmed by Orphidian raiders from the Barrow Moor, those who survived the attack succumbing over following days to the lycanthropic infection and morphing into such creatures themselves. Previous notes on the place, (the foreman's diary was given to the Chapel of St Ygg's) told of occasional hobgoblin incursions but mostly the seasonal loggers were left to work in peace.

The trail is rutted and old, but cuts a sharp divide from the dense forest to one side and the misty wilderness of the Barrow Moor on the other. It is rarely travelled, except for those going to and from the Hernite settlement and the famed Bee Hives of Crooked Yew.

You make the logging camp which is set about a long bowshot from the trail, a defined cleared area of felled trees, the ground having a multitude of stumps. In between them flap the torn canvasses of large tents, set up a seasonal living quarters for the lumberjacks and to one side a more permanent log cabin has been erected.

Leaving the trail to enter the camp you pass some headstones, grave markers set into several mounds that form a line. Simple wooden markers leaning in the boggy ground, the epitaphs abrupt.

Donnell: died of wounds.
Markus: died of wounds.
Singaard: succumbed to virus.
Treyvon: bitten by poisonous creature ...
and a few more, names scratched or weathered beyond recognition.

The remnants of two campfires are noticed. One a typical cooking place with utensils and upturned pots spread about. The second has been used as a pyre, for the burning of the bodies (or the Exuvial skins) of the afflicted loggers by a past expedition.

The camp looks abandoned. No smoke rises from campfires or from the chimney of the cabin. A larger construct whose glass windows have been broken. That the camp was recently used is soon noted. The doorway to the main cabin has a swarm of flies which buzz over the rotting body of a hobgoblin, fallen over the threshold.

An armoured warrior, even deceased might put you on guard but the camp is silent, the former hive of activity ceased enough for grazing deer to flit around the site perimeter.



actions please as you explore the place.

[Cwreando]

Durgo

Durgo will continue his cartography of the area under Gen's tutelage as the head towards the camp. "Everyone keep your eyes on our surroundings and in the air."

At the camp he'll pause the cartography, stow it in his backpack and draw his sword and shield.

"I'd prepare in case of hostiles my friends", comments Durgo. "Gen pair with someone as we look about. Stay close to someone and stay alert."

"Let's search the camp and a small radius of the camp proper and perhaps call to the two children if not creatures are lurking about?"

[kwll]

Genaromes looks at the fallen warrior, poking his body with his staff, to understand how he died exactly. He keeps an eye on his companions, making sure he doesn't dwell too far away from them.