Game-Summaries:7/26/2019 Recollections

Recollections by Iago

I am joined by my friend Haethorwen and fellow members of The Eternal Order, Ember, Amon, Rezik and of course the "eloquent" Cassio.

Celdoriath once tracked a horde of Orcs, growing beyond exhaustion, through severe conditions for a full week in order to fulfill his mission and now our task is to live out his Legacy so that I may prove myself worthy to his Clarion.

I hear in the breeze rumors of a band of brigands well to the south of the Keep that have been plaguing the caravans in the area and so we follow the wind to the source to see what might be found.

Given my lack of natural talents in tracking a target, I lean on Ember to do this part of the work and I spend my time near her, inspiring her and boosting her morale through jokes (mostly at Cassio's expense as she takes particular enjoyment in that) and some music. Her talent has no bounds and within a day we see a campfire in the distance. I said before that her talent has no bounds and she proves this true by transforming herself into a bird and flying close to the camp to observe. Upon her return she tells us that she saw 6 quite large humanoid figures around the campfire, much too large to be your average human. They were also wearing some type of mask that was difficult to make out.

At night I take vigil during the first half of the night, but alas, I must rest some to be able to keep up with the rest. Of course they vacate their camp in the middle of the night while I'm sleeping and we lose sight of them when we all wake. In the morning Amon, Haethorwen and Ember join forces and pick up the scent, which even I could smell, though not follow. The odor was rather distinct. At the end of the day we settle down again close to where they are and this time I decide to investigate by using my Dimensional Door spell to get close behind bushes. I am forced to cast Tongues to understand the guttural language they are speaking, which I believe to be Orcish. Largely they are simply complaining about the masks that they are wearing, which to me look like human faces painted on the masks. It's unclear to us why they are doing this, nor where they are headed, but we must continue to track them to get more information.

We are getting exhausted, not being able to get a full night's rest as they move quite fast and don't seem to need to rest the same as the rest of us. We start using our spells to give relief to the weary.

It is time we learn something about these creatures and I cast Legend Lore in hope to understand more of what we are tracking and learn that:

Cursed be the soul who curses these foul creatures,

Gifted with power but no free will to use it,

Scions of slaughter, descendant from divinity.

Allies underground and enemies in the forest,

Taken by dark powers, tortured and mutilated.

A ruined and terrible form of life, and now perfected.

At the end of the day we decide to rest through the night and hope that we can continue our hunt in the morning.

The 5th and 6th day are fairly uneventful, though exhausting. It is taking a toll on all of us. We're very nearly at The Golden Forest now and Rezik decides that send a rather ridiculous message to someone he knows that lives in the Forest. Not satisfied with the answer he sends another somewhat ridiculous message. Judging by the expression on his face, he remains rather dissatisfied. I'm unsure if this resolved anything really, but at least it was amusing to watch what this creature that walks with a dragon likes to do.

On the 7th day of our hunt we are quite tired, but continue to track them, however at night something is quite different. Ember, as a bird once again, perched on my shoulder Dimensional Door over behind some trees so that we can see what they are doing and observe that are preparing for battle! They are sharpening their weapons, which Ember informs me look of a similar quality to those that she saw the Kobolds using recently. These weapons are far superior to weapons we have come to expect Orcs to be wielding.

We attempt to rest, however very early in the night Ember notes that they have abandoned camp and are moving. She also mentioned that they were all resting as well, however one of the Orcs woke them all up to move. We quickly break camp and follow them. Not a moment too soon as they quickly start running towards the forest at full speed, which is much faster than any of us are able to run.

As we get near the forest, we see a crouched creature who rises as we near him. He is vigorously complaining about the filthy Urog's that we've brought to him. He also let's us know that they decided to charge because of something he did and not wanting to lose our prey, we continue to run towards the creatures.

As we get near them Clarion calls to me. I raise and blow a pure, clean note. The Clarion has an immediate effect on our party as well as the Urog's! We enter battle, which lasted only a couple of moments with all but one of the creatures dead at our feet, who we hold to question.

Celebor, the same individual that Rezik has messaged it seems, questions me as he notices that I'm holding and have used the Celdoriath's Clarion. Haethorwin, not particularly discreetly, whispers in my ear that Celebor is Celdoriath's grandson and is not happy that I posses the Clarion. Racist as I've found all Elves to me, Celebor does not disappoint. I regale him of the story of how I came to acquire the horn and is convinced that his grandfather had found me worthy enough to bequest the Clarion to. Celebor takes us to Celdoriath's Site, where he held off a Drow incursion by himself, while waiting for aid.

It becomes clear to me once here that I must make an Oath of Fealty. The Clarion calls to me and so I make an Oath to the kingdom that Celdoriath's son still rules, I pledge to defend the kingdom that is ruled and managed by the son of Celdoriath in front of Celeborn, grandson of Celdoriath, to the best of my abilities. With that done, I can feel a connection and bond with the Clarion that I had not felt before, it is incredible how it holds onto me and pulls at me.

At this time it is time to get back to understanding what these Urog's are about. I suggest to him that he answer our questions for a chance to get away from here. He tells us that the Baron sent him. After further prompting, he confirms that it is Baron Zibane. His group were told to attack a specific bandit group, to the West of Solace in a small port town. Beyond this we don't learn much, though I did also learn that he worships Luthik. At this point Celebor has decided he has had enough and executes the captive, so I suppose he will not get away after all.

We are invited to stay in the Golden City to rest over night and as we start walking towards the city, it becomes obvious to us that the entire Moon Guard was hidden within the trees the entire time!

Rezik decides to try and Scry Baron Zibane since now we have some item of his possession (from the Urog). I will let him tell this part of the story as that is his to tell.

And thus ends our mission and we return to our Keep and some more information that we had before.

Recollections by Rezik

Iago had recruited Amon, Cassio, Ember, and I to help him discover the legacy of Celdoriath, a horn that he received from a ghost - apparently. It seems to be surrounded by strong elven magic and I wanted to learn more, so I agreed to join him.

He let us know that the legacy required us to follow in Celdoriath’s footsteps, completing a series of tasks to fully discover its true powers. We had to start by tracking a monster for 7 days.

The group started by looking for rumors of nefarious goings on - and we found out that there was a group of mercenaries harassing villagers in the south. We decided to find and track the mercenaries to ensure there wasn’t more to the story.

We spent about a day searching for the camp, and found one with a soft fire. We believed it to be the camp of the mercenaries.

Note: Ember is extremely good at tracking. Maybe Gramph could learn a thing or two from her.

In an effort to get a better look at the mercenaries, Ember turned into a sparrow and flew up close. She let us know that there were about 6 humanoid figures huddled around the camp fire, looking like they’re wearing some kind of mask.

We decided to rest the night and continue tracking them in the morning. Unbeknownst to us, the mercenaries had decide to move in the night - we missed them entirely. When we woke in the morning, the camp was empty.

We started tracking them again, only finding them thanks to the fact that they smelt horrible. I don’t think they’ve ever showered.

The next night Iago used his dimension door to get close to them. He found out that they were speaking Orcish and that the masks seemed to have human faces painted on them. Sadly, he couldn’t get closer to tell us much more.

We kept watch through the night and Casio noticed that the Orcs were preparing to move. We followed them and realized that they weren’t regular orcs, but were somehow magical. We realized they were heading in the direction of the Golden Forest.

I took a moment to cast Sending an inform Celebor of the Orcs, let him know that he could scry me to track where we were.

Note: Celebor thinks Sending jokes are funny. We’ll have to think of an appropriate prank back.

On the 7th night, we noticed that the orcs were no longer preparing to travel. We assumed that they had reached their destination and would prepare for some kind of assault.

In the morning, the orcs started charging toward the forest screaming. We quickly dispatched them, with the help of Celebor, who decided to join in on the fun.

We captured one of the orcs, with the hopes of interrogating him for more information. It turns out the orcs were mutilated and in pain, the masks, while not magical, we’re profane. They were actual human faces that the orcs were wearing.

Celebor escorted us to the tomb of Celdoriath, where Iago pledged something or other to Celebor. Turns out Celebor is actually a Prince and Celdoriath was his grandfather.

Note: Remember to bother Reshi about being a princess or something

When we interrogated the orc, we found that Baron Zevane had sent them. We don’t understand why, but he seems to have been creating these orcs.

I decided to scry Baron Zevane to see what he was doing and saw him working over an alchemy table. He was able to see my scrying sensor and he quickly threw a cloak over it to block my view.

We’ll have to spend more time investigating Baron Zevane and understanding what his role is and what motivates him.