Wintercap Mushrooms (or "A Walk Among the Tombstones")
Feb 14, 2018 14:53:04 GMT
Demik / Code likes this
Post by Varis/G'Lorth/Sundilar on Feb 14, 2018 14:53:04 GMT
Excerpt from the Journal of Varis Nailo
13th day of Alturiak
I spent the morning in The Ettin with Demik, the human death mage with whom I cleared the rats from Port Ffirst some months back. An interesting man - quiet and thoughtful. The cleric, Serephina and Aramil, one of the fair folk, had just joined us and were proposing we answer a call from the new chef at the Four Fair Winds when three new arrivals stumbled through the door. Thinking it a fine introduction to life in Daring, we invited them to join us and soon we were all sat in the Four Fair Winds enjoying a drink and listening to the chef ramble on about mushrooms or some such. I have little patience for menial work, but the man was offering decent payment for what sounded like a simple foraging trip, so I agreed and herded the fresh meat out onto the northern plains and toward the woods.
We made camp that first night in the lea of a hill, and as I stood watch, from the distant tree line I heard a howl that quickened memory and chilled me more than any wind. It seems the Lycans are no longer confined to the south woods. The rest of the night passed without incident, and I made no mention of what I had heard to the others. No need to scare our new friends too badly on their first night in The Expanse.
We trekked on through the morning, coming at last to a ruined church, empty and long abandoned, though with tracks leading to and from, perhaps sometime in the last month or so. The place reeked of undeath, but we found the building itself unnervingly quiet. I could not decipher the inscriptions above the alter, but a journal found in one of the rooms off the main chapel made mention of an elven moon goddess. I have neither knowledge nor interest in the gods of my father's people, but perhaps one of the more scholarly types in Daring would find it noteworthy.
Behind the structure, in the small church graveyard, we found a grim and perplexing sight. A field of the mushrooms we had come to seek, carefully cultivated upon the graves. One of the new arrivals, a dwarven man, set to harvesting the crop with little concern, and as the rest of us cautiously investigated our surrounding, a flash of foul necromantic magic flared from the ruins of the church and the dead beneath the ground crawled forth and attacked us. Though never having faced the undead before, my training with the Order served me well, and we soon dispatched the walking corpses and set to gathering the mushrooms in earnest.
As the others rested, myself and a few of my companions spotted a cave some way into the woods. Seeing it to be unatural, we returned and gathered the rest of the group, heading down to explore the caverns beneath and coming eventually to a grim laboratory. Here, surrounded by tomes on the black arts, someone, or something, had been experimenting on the corpses of all manner of creatures, and when one of the newcomers pulled back the sheet covering one of the work benches, we saw the extent of this mage's work. A foul blend of lycanthropy and necromantic magics sprang from the table and attacked us, badly wounding Serephina before finally being felled. We had no time to celebrate our victory however, as from the walls of the chamber burst an army of undead. I grabbed my fallen comrade and we all fled, one of the new arrivals collapsing the tunnels behind us as we ran.
We returned to Daring and were paid by the chef, but my mind returns again and again to the laboratory beneath the ground, and to what mastery it's owner must possess to marry lycanthropy with undeath.
13th day of Alturiak
I spent the morning in The Ettin with Demik, the human death mage with whom I cleared the rats from Port Ffirst some months back. An interesting man - quiet and thoughtful. The cleric, Serephina and Aramil, one of the fair folk, had just joined us and were proposing we answer a call from the new chef at the Four Fair Winds when three new arrivals stumbled through the door. Thinking it a fine introduction to life in Daring, we invited them to join us and soon we were all sat in the Four Fair Winds enjoying a drink and listening to the chef ramble on about mushrooms or some such. I have little patience for menial work, but the man was offering decent payment for what sounded like a simple foraging trip, so I agreed and herded the fresh meat out onto the northern plains and toward the woods.
We made camp that first night in the lea of a hill, and as I stood watch, from the distant tree line I heard a howl that quickened memory and chilled me more than any wind. It seems the Lycans are no longer confined to the south woods. The rest of the night passed without incident, and I made no mention of what I had heard to the others. No need to scare our new friends too badly on their first night in The Expanse.
We trekked on through the morning, coming at last to a ruined church, empty and long abandoned, though with tracks leading to and from, perhaps sometime in the last month or so. The place reeked of undeath, but we found the building itself unnervingly quiet. I could not decipher the inscriptions above the alter, but a journal found in one of the rooms off the main chapel made mention of an elven moon goddess. I have neither knowledge nor interest in the gods of my father's people, but perhaps one of the more scholarly types in Daring would find it noteworthy.
Behind the structure, in the small church graveyard, we found a grim and perplexing sight. A field of the mushrooms we had come to seek, carefully cultivated upon the graves. One of the new arrivals, a dwarven man, set to harvesting the crop with little concern, and as the rest of us cautiously investigated our surrounding, a flash of foul necromantic magic flared from the ruins of the church and the dead beneath the ground crawled forth and attacked us. Though never having faced the undead before, my training with the Order served me well, and we soon dispatched the walking corpses and set to gathering the mushrooms in earnest.
As the others rested, myself and a few of my companions spotted a cave some way into the woods. Seeing it to be unatural, we returned and gathered the rest of the group, heading down to explore the caverns beneath and coming eventually to a grim laboratory. Here, surrounded by tomes on the black arts, someone, or something, had been experimenting on the corpses of all manner of creatures, and when one of the newcomers pulled back the sheet covering one of the work benches, we saw the extent of this mage's work. A foul blend of lycanthropy and necromantic magics sprang from the table and attacked us, badly wounding Serephina before finally being felled. We had no time to celebrate our victory however, as from the walls of the chamber burst an army of undead. I grabbed my fallen comrade and we all fled, one of the new arrivals collapsing the tunnels behind us as we ran.
We returned to Daring and were paid by the chef, but my mind returns again and again to the laboratory beneath the ground, and to what mastery it's owner must possess to marry lycanthropy with undeath.
