The Crimson Dryad (28/05) (BB)

Overheard an interesting group in Daring this week, including a blue dragonborn (the blue group is slowly growing, Pieni will be glad to hear). Talking about strange illnesses, crying crimson dryads, and probable magical causes in a place called the Bloody Creek. This sounded like a perfect opportunity to experience some more of the odd magical events that have been happening in Kantas recently, so I jumped at the chance.

Luckily these guys had already been to Bloody Creek, said it was on the edge of the Angelbark Forest, so getting there was no problem. When we arrived I first noticed the impressively tall cypress trees up on the creek itself, didn’t have time to get clippings sadly. There were also quite a few smoldering burnt husks of what used to be homes, which was certainly odd, but I was reassured by the others this was due to ogres and not magic.

We then all turned a corner to find a wonderful orchard attached to a pastor's house, whose door was also charred and a bit ruined. I was again reassured this was not usual for holy homes (but the cider production was?). Inside was a kobold man attending the sick children, who certainly needed the help, he was the one who suggested finding the crimson dryad and bringing back its bark as it supposedly had healing properties. The children had also fallen ill after playing with this particular dryad, so I was unsure if they would be friendly to us.

After looking at the town’s inn for Ned, who had originally asked for help for the children, we found he had already set off to find the dryad as he knew where they could be found. A bit rude to not wait if you ask me, but I did manage to get some nice soup before we left. So off we went into the forest, tracking Ned’s prints until we end up in the Feywild somehow. It was getting a bit bright and confusing at this point so I asked some tortoises for help and they led us straight into the Shadowfell. I should really figure out if jumping between planes should be this easy or not.

Having been here before I sped on ahead with the tortoises to a large tree on a hill and straight into the dryad herself! She didn’t look very happy at all, and after hearing her story I think I would also be sobbing at the base of a tree as well. Talia was her actual name, and she had been sacrificed in a tomb and turned into a dryad by the hag sisters after being betrayed by the elven man who was meant to be escorting them. This traitor had also chased off Ned earlier, which was probably why we hadn’t found him.

Though upset she seemed friendly enough to let me approach and take some bark scrapings from her, which was the moment that the traitor decided to reveal himself. Not knowing who we were he just obnoxiously announces he’s going to kill us and starts summoning zombies left right and centre, including a gosh darn zombie ogre!

We all managed to hold off the zombies pretty well, with some help from Talia herself. She had transformed into this overgrown tree root beast which was smashing up zombies like a badass. Once the traitor man was taken down we all tried to understand what was happening but Talia was our only source of information and she was being taken away into the forest by her tree root form, said its power was too great for her to resist. With her gone all we could do was investigate what was left on the hill. The most interesting piece of information was a symbol of a circle with three arrows pointing into it carved onto the leg of the zombie ogre. The hill itself seemed interesting as we realised then that it had both the skeletal remains of a dragon head and the ruins of a stone gate on it. There was definitely some significance to these structures and a bigger story to discover but we were running out of time with the sick children back in the town. So we returned to the town with no Ned in sight, but if he can get himself out there he can surely get back right?

The kobold looking after the children was very happy with the scrapings I had got, and started making the healing slave straight away. It was quite a weird colour, not sure I would want to be treated with it myself. I just hope it works, those children looked like they really needed it.

All in all I think today was a success, I learned something interesting about planar travels and dryads, helped some children, and collected some fey flowers.



Till next time,

BB