Call of the Wandering Soul - Sorrel and the PTSD episode

“400 gold is the going rate for a mission to Hell,” Sorrel shrugged. “This can’t be much worse than that.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Meredith or professor Meredith or whatever the title was. Sorrel was hazy on academic job titles but she knew they were very important to academics and the dwarven woman hiring them was fresh from Daring Heights Academy.

“It’s the Angelbark Forest,” Meredith said. “Payment, 400 gold in advance, right? And 400 after.”

“That’s a lot,” Ivan said cautiously, rearranging his collection of battleaxes in the sheaths and belts that strapped weaponry to his muscular form. “People don’t normally pay that much unless it’s dangerous.”

“It is dangerous.” Meredith assured him. “We don’t even know how dangerous. Could be very dangerous.”

“It’s not just a forest,” Bones warned, the sorcerer’s feathers standing on end. “It’s a bit of a temporal anomaly and a bit of a haven for various creatures, some of which you wouldn’t expect to meet in a forest.”

“That’s what you’re all for,” Meredith smiled in a deeply unsettling way. “And Micah, my bodyguard.”

The scrawny male of uncertain stock in studded leather next to her grunted. “Don’t worry, just stay behind me and you’ll be fine.”

Ivan gazed at Bones adoringly. “If he’s going, I’ll go.”

“I don’t know too much about the Angelbark,” Dwirhian mused, the tall elf looking pleased rather than nervous. “I’ve heard stories, but the professor and Bones are the experts. Sounds like there could be anything there, that’s what makes it exciting, right?”

“There’s corpse flowers there, dinosaurs there, some dark connections to the Shadowfell there, weird temples, zombies, that sort of stuff,” Sorrel ticked off her encounters on her fingers.

“That isn’t the typical fauna for a temperate forest,” Meredith nods happily. “Let’s go!”

Start as you mean to go on

They’d been lost for hours when Ivan finally pushed Meredith and Bones aside, his hand brushing Bones almost affectionately. “I am actually really good at navigation, and I have been to this forest before, may I try my skills?” the barbarian suggested.

“I could invoke the help of the goddess Selûne,” Sorrel offered. “She may be able to offer you guidance to an amount of between one and four.”

A few hours later they stumbled into a patch of ground that could loosely be described as a clearing. Dwirhian did her best to divert a stream to provide a moat for their camp but created a small swamp instead. Ivan and Micah stripped down for some serious flexing, picking up unnecessarily large bundles of firewood as they strutted in front of Bones and Dwirhian.

Sorrel stepped into the shadows and whispered like the breeze, calling on the plants to speak with her. They spoke of sunlight, foxes, badger, wolves and the fog… the fog that passes through. Sorrel felt uneasy at the sound of the fog and was about to warn the others when she realised she was stumbling into an intense little scene between Ivan and Bones.

“You got me. Don’t tell anyone,” Bones was saying. Ivan looked giddy and seemed on the verge of reaching out to touch Bones.

“I don’t know why but I find this very agreeable,” Ivan said eventually.

“That’s good to know,” Bones nodded.

“I’m glad you, uh, you know that.”

“This is between us,” Bones insisted as he walked away, leaving Ivan muttering “I need to tell Oziah about this.”

They set watches. Dwirhian and Micah took first and second and when Sorrel awoke to share third with Bones, Micah was snoring loudly. There was a fox sleeping by the fire. Dwirhian told them it had walked up to their campsite bold as brass, then the elf slipped into a trance like state and set their mind to roaming in the dreams of elven ancestors.

Play Misty for me

Bones took a position on a tree-branch. Sorrel approached the fox, holding a scrap of meat, and tried to wake it up. It was startled but Sorrel spoke soothingly with her fey magic allowing free communication.

“No need to worry, my friend,” she told the shivering animal.

“Scared,” the fox’s voice was soft and high like a child shaken from their blankets to flee an invader.

“Of what?’

“Forest doesn’t like people. Forest is angry.”

“Why?” Sorrel stroked the warm fur and laid more meat in front of the animal’s grateful snout.

“Fire. Fire scares the forest.”

“Why are you here?”

“Fire is warm. Forest is angry. Avoid anger.”

Sorrel was puzzled. “Is the forest angry with you?”

“When forest is angry everyone suffers.”

“Is the fire the only reason the forest is angry?”

The fox looked at Micah, snoring on the floor. “Forest doesn’t like him.”

“Doesn’t like that man?” Sorrel corrected herself. “I mean elf?”

“Bad man.”

Bones shouted down from the tree “What are you doing?”

“Talking to the fox,” Sorrel spoke quietly but with urgency. “What’s happening with Micah?”

Bones and Sorrel looked over at his sleeping form. The mist around him had a subtle reddish hue.

Sorrel watched the mist coil around the bodyguard’s skin and cleared her throat. “Bones, I don’t know what your experience of mists is…” she began

“Red mist is usually bad,” Bones replied.

“I’d have thought,” Sorrel nodded.

“I want to investigate but I also don’t want to get involved with that red mist,” Bones was watching it cautiously as he glided down from the high branch.

“I think we already are involved with the red mist,” Sorrel said gently.

“But I don’t want to stick my hand in it. Have you got any alternatives?”

Sorrel thought for a while, then reached for the ritual from her time on hunting mages and called on magic to reveal itself whilst stroking the nervous fox to comfort it. As she chanted, the mist turned deeper red.

“I’m not fucking touching that shit,” Bones spat. “Maybe try shooting an arrow into it.”

Sorrel was still chanting and broke off briefly. “I’ve got a bit more time casting this,” then sighed as the last words died away and just the party’s vast array of arcane butchery and manipulation shone out. “It’s not magic in the way my spell can detect. But it’s red, which is not natural.”

“Maybe it’s some sort of fungal spore,” Bones said hopefully. “Or blood that’s evaporated for some reason.”

“If it’s fungal spores I can probably talk to it,” Sorrel considered it. “I doubt it is.”

And suddenly Sorrel was in the clearing miles away as the fog boiled up from the Shadowfell and she could see the Hunger Spirit in the red mist as it closed around Bones and she would not let it win again but the fear gnawed at her like millions of scuttling spiders crawling up inside her skin and their poison seeping into her veins as the Hunger Spirit hissed at her and she could see Bones running towards her and she froze, her mind tumbling into the darkness and the woodcutters corpses were all around her with great bites taken out of them as they devoured each other and the dead city stretched away with the webs covering the children as the spiders hauled their prey towards the giant gaping mouth of the Hunger Spirt and Lolth and the darkness and all of the nightmares were coming true and Bones was panicking now as the mist clawed at her and Sorrel fumbled for her bow and her sword and then she ran but the mist was everywhere and she remembered the assassins lair and the magic of the hiding planes with the rope spilling out of her rucksack she implored the fey spirits to open the gate to please in the name of the goddess open the gate for her because she was scared, so scared and needed to hide where the rope met the sky so she could climb, screaming out to the others to come, come running and Bones, save Bones but she was shaking so hard she nearly fell from the rope and then…

She was in the hidden plane.

She held onto herself, quivering and gasping, trying not to retch.

She could see the others climbing and the red mist around Bones.

Dwirhian bought sleet crashing down on the mist, but it clung on to Bones, trying to prick his skin with a million needles.

Sorrel felt the panic and the bile rising again. The fog. The spirit. The spiders.

And then Bones soared into the sky, high up above the treetops like an eagle in the mountains.

The mist fell away, and Bones was free.

Then she noticed the mist, like a falling tide, sliding away from the clearing and off into the trees.

It was quiet for a while, then Dwirhian pushed open the planar sanctums mouth and lowered the rope. Bones swooped down. Meredith and Ivan climbed out too, leaving Sorrel alone inside. She looked hard at the darkness between the trees and flashes came to her again of the Spirit and the woodcutter, but brief and faint.

Her heart rate was back to normal.

Finally, she clambered down and saw the fox sprawled lifeless by the fire, all blood drained from its tiny corpse.

She sat for a few moments and stared at the staring eyes and mouth locked open in a scream. She felt the trust again as she fed it small chunks of meet and its quiet voice as it told her of the forest’s dangers, curled up in the safety of her fire.

She had failed.

She heard the party talking, their voices coming from thousands of miles away until, like water clearing from her ears, she could make out the words.

They were talking about the mist. Bones had been thinking – it felt like vampiric mist, the vapour that remains if a vampire’s mist form can’t find its coffin. It had a hunger for blood.

Sorrel walked over to Micah’s corpse and found a desiccated husk with all the fluid drained out. She flipped it over and saw a pendant around his neck that she’d not noticed earlier – the symbol of Shar, Selûne’s sworn enemy.

“Fuck this guy, he sucked,” she said, feeling a little better.

The day has a thousand couple of pairs of eyes 

They were exhausted by their disrupted night and stumbled like sleepwalkers through the trees all morning. Sorrel had the feeling they were being watched and kept seeing movement in the trees from the corner of her eyes. Each time she turned her head, there was nothing there, but she could see Dwirhian had spotted something too. They exchanged nervous glances and Sorrel strung her bow in case it was needed quickly.

“There are eyes watching us,” Dwirhian spoke just loud enough for the party to hear. As he spoke, they spotted an unusually tall tree just up ahead. Hanging by ropes or vines from its branches were the bodies of dead animals, like some ghastly fruit of death.

Sorrel leaned against a young birch sapling and whispered the fey magic.

“What is this thing?”

“Tree, companion, friend, friend, hunt, hunt, kill. Tree hunts. Baits more, hunts more. Foxes come, eat animals, foxes caught.”

Moderately helpful. “Where is the mist now?”

“Mist gone, wrath gone. Forest watching.”

Sorrel considered this. “Would you advise us against lighting a fire?”

“Fire dangerous. Safe fire forest will not anger. Danger will anger forest. Wrath of forest deadly.”

“So, the tree hunts shit but a bonfire should be OK,” she reported back. “I don’t know if that helps.”

As they watched, a crow landed on one of the animal corpses and started pecking at it. The party moved well out of range of the trees outer branches and walked on. They passed several more of the trees and, at one, they noticed a stoat moving stealthily towards one of the dead animals. Just before it could sink its teeth in, a vine whipped out, grabbed it and dangled it in mid-air.

“And yet the crow was okay,” Sorrel said conversationally as they watched the small mammal struggle to live.

“Maybe it senses vibrations,” Bones shrugged, then cried out, “For anyone watching us, we are archaeological explorers, we’re not here to burn down the forest.”

“We’re the good guys,” added Ivan.

There was a pause.

“Well…” Bones began.

“It’s complicated,” Sorrel called.

“We’re here to look at the forest, not do anything to it,” Bones followed up.

“That makes us the good guys doesn’t it?” Ivan turned to Bones.

“Do you think being good just involves not being bad?”

“Isn’t it the same thing?”

“I feel this explains a lot about you Ivan,” Bones shook his head.

“I feel like you’re judging me.”

“Yes. Yes, I very much am. I'm not trying to hide that.”

“Listen, you,” Ivan sounded outraged. “At least I’m here wearing my own skin.”

“This is a great place for the party to stop getting along,” Sorrel sighed. “Maybe soon we can split into two groups.”

Up all night to get lucky 

They walked and walked, the trees stretching away endlessly in all directions. As the day began to end, they arrived in a clearing in the trees with the evening sun shining through the forest’s leaves onto a verdant field of grass.

“This looks better,” Sorrel surveyed the wide space.

“Never say that!” Ivan sighed. “You’ve cursed it now.”

“Yeah, I don’t know why I said that” Sorrel shook her head. “I take it back.”

“It’s too late now, it’s out in the ether.”

Bones looked over. “What did you say?”

“Nothing. I didn’t say anything.”

“No, but really.”

“No, I genuinely didn’t say anything.”

“Fine,” Bones shrugged and flew up to take his bearings.

Sorrel surveyed the soft grass in the gentle evening sun. “Well, this is where we die I guess,” she started unpacking her bed roll.

Bones flew back down and settled in front of the party. “I think the forest got bigger.”

“Or are you just saying that because you can’t see the edge of it?” Meredith sniffed.

“No, it feels weird,” Bones looked uneasy. “This area is known for weird geography.”

“That’s what you’re being paid for,” Meredith shrugged.

“Do you never just chill?” Ivan grumbled.



After the campfire was blazing, talk turned to more uplifting subjects like heartbreak and death. Meredith and Sorrel shared stories of the jungle wars of Chult, with Sorrel recalling some houses of ill repute she’d taken unusual pleasure in.

“Sorrel, don’t you have a girlfriend or something?” Bones looked curiously at the gloomy ranger.

“Well, that’s a bit of a moot point right now,” Sorrel rocked back on her heels. “It’s a long story, filled with difficult emotions.”

“So you ran away to a deadly forest where vampire mist tried to suck your blood?”

“It’s a lot easier than dealing with emotions and commitment.”



Ivan pulled out a bottle and waved it triumphantly in front of everyone. “This will keep me up all night and allow you all to sleep,” he announced proudly.

“Methamphetamine?” Sorrel’s old mercenary friend from the jungle wars.

“No, this refreshes me, there’s no come down,” Ivan passed the bottle over and Sorrel sniffed it. Definitely not meth.

“I need me some of this bad boy,” she passed it back to Ivan.



They rose with the sun to find Ivan talking to the trees. He disappeared into the foliage and came back with a boar’s carcass, its throat pierced by what appeared to be two arrow wounds.

“The eyes gave us something to eat for breakfast,” he beamed. “I think they appreciated we were having a safe fire.”

Meredith searched for the ration sacks for onions and spices then turned back, grim faced.

“We have an issue. Ivan, where are the rations?”

“I wasn’t watching them the whole time. I went for a walk. I was tricked. I think they took the rations and gave us this boar in exchange. Why don’t we eat this boar and then have a look around to see whether there are any tracks?”

After breakfast Sorrel moved quietly through the bushes and found two sets of paw-prints. One set, large and either a wolf or something resembling a wolf, tracked near the bloody traces of the boar’s carcass then disappeared through a bush. The other, the tracks of a pack of rats, lead to the saddlebags and away again. She returned to find the party packed and ready to go.

Beware carnivorous trees bearing gifts

About two hours further on, they saw a freshly killed deer’s corpse ahead.

“This is fortunate,” Bones scratched his head. “And weird.”

“And suspicious,” Sorrel regarded the body with caution then examined it carefully, finding two arrow wounds just like those that killed the boar.

“Anyone thinking they were listening to our conversation?” Ivan moved to pick the body up.

“No, don’t move it yet,” Bones moved forward to examine the scene and noted from the blood spattering that the animal had been moved from wherever it had been killed.

Dwirhian suggested something or someone was giving them food. “Perhaps,” Sorrel said cheerfully, “they’re feeding us because they’re planning to eat us.”

“Someone’s clearly listening to us, and I want you to know that this is not enough to make up for the food you took,” Ivan called out. “Though venison is my favourite so thanks for that…”

“Let’s try this,” Sorrel muttered, then called out; “what would be great is rabbit.”

“No, no, that wouldn’t be good,” Ivan looked crestfallen. “They’re tiny.”

“Okay, several rabbits. A brace. Six,” offered Sorrel.

“No, let’s have twelve,” Ivan yelled.

“Don’t be too specific,” Bones urged. “We’ll annoy them.”

Ivan paused, nodded and cried, “Okay, whatever you want to give us is fine.”

“Well now we're just confusing the waiter,” Bones grumbled as the party set off.

Dwirhian start playing some gentle music, perhaps to calm things down, but the bickering and yelling continued. About mid-day they to a tree with bark stripped off in a three-foot square and words carved in Elvish saying: ‘The forest does not like noise. Please stop shouting.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Sorrel shrugged.

Ivan’s brow darkened, he drew an axe and shouted “Stop stealing then!”

An arrow thudded into the ground in front of him from somewhere high in the trees.

“Ya missed!” Ivan yelled, or rather, “Ya…” as Sorrel cast Silence on the irate barbarian just as Bones rushed over to cover his mouth. A second arrowburied itself the handle of Ivan’s axe. His mouth was open as he tried you yell a reply but the spell held firm, so he settled for a surprisingly cheerful thumbs up. Marksmanship clearly impressed him. And then he started carving ‘more meat’ into the tree-trunk.

“I can hear a very quiet voice saying ‘ungrateful fucks’ in Elvish,” Dwirhian said gently.

“I know!” Sorrel reached into her backpack and hauled out her Mug of Plenty. “We’ll offer them something in return. Apple cider or… no, wait, a peppermint eggnog cocktail!”

She used a light blessing to forge a rough bowl of bark and left the drink as an offering at the foot of the tree. The party stepped back and watched, hopefully.

After a few minutes a squirrel scampered up and started drinking the powerfully alcoholic mixture.

“You got a squirrel pissed,” Dwirhian turned to Sorrel.

“That was a better idea in my head,” she admitted.

Apocalypse now

They looked out at the vast forest. The sun was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the mighty trees filled their gaze to the uttermost ends of the earth, waving sombrely under an overcast sky. Everything seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

They shouldered their packs and carried on.

**** This relies heavily on Jamie's extensive and accurate notes of the session ****