Revelations

With Qin still at the inn, Helmut, Rin, and Tallyn meet Alanud after talking with his wife for a while. Their names in actuality are Lanad and Del respectively. Tallyn recognizes them from legend. They describe a god by the name of Melos that has escaped the years after the fall Tevareth by trapping this region in its own delusion, perverting the shrines to the other God’s that have fallen. Things change and are remembered differently by the people in this region unless they hold amulets such as the ones that we were certain had always been around our necks.

We are working with a God hunter named Larth and it seems like despite mystery to the origins of his group, they are specifically taking out Melos in this instance. Both Lanad and Del find him to be an unsavory ally, but an ally nonetheless. Word should come from him on where the next shrine is, but until then, we need to be careful not to cause people to take too much notice of us. Nothing weird.

Time to stock up.

Shopping

We leave their place, and immediately head to the inn to catch up Qin on all the details. There we briefly part ways. Rin goes to the blacksmith to get some modifications and buy some things. Tallyn and Qin go to the book store where Tallyn senses a number of magic books, including one behind the counter that he leaves alone. He finds a history book that mentions Melos writing down the results of some epic battle and a book that helps him perform some new tricks.

A house of trickery

After we meet up, we head back to Lanad and Del’s house. They inform us that our “friend” has been by and he has given us directions to the next shrine. It’s the shrine for the old god Hugo, god of trickery, and it is north west through some farm lands. A small house on a hill. They also give us a few things including some ashes that can be rubbed above our eyes to give us visions—though maybe unreliable ones.

We go there directly. Ready for trickery, whimsy, and what ever else the gods might have left behind. The house seems smaller than previous shrines, and as we enter it we notice not only the depictions of Hugo drinking merily, but that this shrine looks to have been undisturbed for a long time. We head further in until we find a room with a sunrod. Tallyn, staying a bit further back notices there’s a lot of magic coming from deep within.

As we enter the room, a figure appears who calls himself Merrick. He seems to know un awful lot about our situation, naming the players and basically calling us out on what we’ve been up to. To proceed in our quest, he wants to play a game with us. We don’t get a choice.

Rin proceeds to go back the way we came and notices that things have changed, the entrance area now opens up into a town in old Tevareth with people speaking Tevarin, a language familiar to only Helmut and Tallyn. We learn rather quickly where the mayor’s house is, and play up the visitor card.

Upon entering the mayor’s house, Rin begins acting more foreign than usual and uncouth. Using the special prophecy ashes, Rin sees the mayor gesture from behind his door and a pouring of guards comes out. We enter and speak with him. He welcomes us warmly enough and makes small talk. Soon, a woman and child enter the room and screams, “That’s them!” The mayor doesn’t lose a beat, summoning the guards from the door behind him. Rin, literally, saw this coming.

Acting quick, Rin yells to everyone to “RUN!” and then does some fancy acrobatics, distracting the guards while everyone runs away. Helmut grabs Qin who seems to be stumbling, and they bolt. They run past a guard, tell him there’s trouble inside, and he just goes direclty in. Meanwhile, Rin is jumping around all, throwing random things and making a scene. Then runs into the waiting room, uses his shield to bash through the window and rolls down the hill, running to catch up with the crew.

Guards seem to be following us, and we make our way away from the crowds, hiding behind a hill. We here the guards go by without looking too close for us. Shortly after, we here a winded guard taking up the rear. We ambush him with kindness, and charm him into telling us what-the-hell is going on. He explains a grisly murder happened and the culprits were getting away. They were in hot pursuit! We tell him we want to help. Maybe they went back to the scene of the crime! He takes us, and once there, we give him permission to leave us to go to the pub. Not a lot of vomit-inducing gore to see there. And hey, maybe those badguys needed a drink.

We enter and find “Where is Merrick?” scrawled on the wall everywhere, a dead body in the corner resembling Merrick. It twitches, moves, and asks us, “Having fun yet?!” Suddenly it’s night.

Sorry for no flavor text. Obsidian portal froze and deleted my better piece with more thought put into it. Now I’m annoyed and just typing it out matter of factly.

We woke up after the vision and went to Thonarfin. We learned Mothere was alive, weird. We saw Alanud’s wife being shunned and she says he’s missing. We follow up but she seems kind of off. As we go south, we learn Alanud has been dead for a year, even weirder. We go back to the temple area and it’s undisturbed and there are no bodies and a fire has been recently put out. We then go into the forest and find the dryad who is mostly not helpful except to say that the leaf is from nature God’s cloak and could be kind of good to eat for something or other. We head back, Mothere is slowly becoming lucid and we get hints that he remembers a bit of what we remember. We meet the person who replaced Alanud and he tells us of some reports down south. Swamp beasts or somethin’. Who knows?

Last we left our heroes, after a brief encounter with a worg and a goblin, they had just entered into a room carved into the stone of a small cliff face. Noting the forest themed wall decorations, the party determined that this place is a shrine of some sort dedicated to the old god of nature, Umrar. In a small room to the right of the entrance, Helmut and Tallyn find a ruined fountain and pool of still water, but nothing else. The only thing to do is to continue on into the dark hallway to the left.

Qin stealthily leads the way, with the others following close behind. His care pays off when he notices a tripwire not far down the first hallway, and small holes punched through the right wall. A devious trap, no doubt. Sneaking past and rounding two quick corners, they see another hallway leading off to the south, and ahead a torch lighting the entrance to a room. They sneak up, and find two goblins in the room, completely unaware of the party’s presence. Helmut, ever the optimist, walks into the room to greet the goblins. The rest of the party isn’t so friendly. Tallyn runs between the goblins and terrifies them. Rin readies an attack. Qin looses an arrow at one of the goblins, killing it instantly. Helmut follows suit and knocks out the other with a mighty blow from the flat of his sword. So much for that.

The room is clearly meant to take advantage of the tripwire trap, with the holes in the wall letting the goblins shoot arrows at unsuspecting intruders. Coming from behind another door in this room, the party hears scratching, and Rin opens the door to investigate. Immediately, a wave of rats pours out before the door can be shut, and Rin and Helmut are covered in swarms of the creatures. Not so much of a threat to Helmut’s sturdy construction, but Rin is squishy and the rats get in some bites before being cut, burned, and splattered fairly quickly after. Rin heals himself as the goblin begins to come to. He helpfully informs the party (after counting on his fingers) that there are “more than two” goblins in the shrine, and that they are lead by someone called Skarg. For his help he is locked in the former rat room. We’ll let him out later…

Hyped up from the fight, the party loudly makes its way down the other hallway they had passed, soon finding themselves in a much larger room with a high ceiling, an altar, and a large statue of Umrar behind it. It is in noticeably nicer condition than the rest of the place has been so far. Qin senses magic emanating from the altar, and has the idea that something from nature should be offered. He goes back out to the entrance, returning with a small stick, and places it on the altar. Vines quickly grow up around the alter, entwining the stick and breaking away, leaving a behind small loop of vine. Qin takes it and keeps it for later, not sure of the significance of this object. Meanwhile, Tallyn finds and unlocks a hidden door leading from this altar room directly back to the entryway.

Continuing deeper into the shrine, the party finds a small room with a worktable directly south of the altar room. Not much to see here. Let’s just move on. Wait, no. Qin detects magic coming from a corner of the room. There’s a hidden stone door in this wall, but its locked. It’s much different than the door Tallyn found, too. Anyone know how to use a lock pick? Anyone even have a lock pick? Maybe Helmut can just smash it open? Helmut smashes it open. Behind it, there’s a tiny room with another door, this one made of wood. This room is different, though. No decoration, and noticeably warmer. That door is what the magic is coming from. Every type of magic.

Qin goes over to open the door. He reaches out, grabs the doorknob and pauses for a moment before quickly letting go. Come on, just open it. Tallyn walks over, grabs the doorknob and pauses for a moment before letting go as well. What’s wrong with you guys? Rin walks over, grabs the doorknob, and freezes in place. When they touched the doorknob, Qin and Tallyn saw themselves open the door and find a vast barren desert behind it, with nothing around for miles and miles. But they came to their senses and let go, realizing this to be some sort of magical vision or hallucination. It seems Rin didn’t see the illusion. Rin walks through the door and finds himself in the middle of the wasteland. Turning around, the door is gone. With no other choice, he begins to walk towards a megalithic building in the distance.

How does one save a friend whose mind is seemingly lost in a magic door? Even touching Rin gives Tallyn the same vision as before. Qin ties a rope around Rin, being careful not to touch, and with Helmut’s help they pull Rin away from the door…and he falls to the ground on his back, arm still reaching out, frozen in position like a statue. Helmut smashes the door with his shoulder, and the wood buckles against the stone directly behind it. This door doesn’t even have hinges. And Rin is unaffected. Qin doesn’t think anything medical he can do will help. Helmut bops Rin with his metal foot and Rin finally comes to his senses, and recounts his desert wanderings. Before moving on, the party notices a now rather smudged set of footprints left by someone walking out of the door. Maybe leave this thing as a puzzle for later.

There’s only one way to go from here, and the party moves off quietly down another hallway. They hear a throaty growling coming from somewhere behind the doors to the south, and from the north they can hear water dripping and splashing. Making their way decidedly away from the growling, they find a (non-magical) wooden door not properly set in its hinges, behind which is the source of the watery noises. The door is forced into place, and opening it reveals a small room, partially flooded by an underground stream that runs through it. There’s a skylight, and below the opening is a small shrub growing in the stream.

The shrub greets the party. “Hello. I am a shrub.” It tells how it was awakened by the shrine’s keepers a long time ago. After coming to terms with the idea of a talking shrub and naming it Schröbert, the party asks it what it knows about the shrine. In its own shrubby way, Schröbert says that after a long time of very little happening, someone new has come to the shrine, bringing these goblins with him, and has been reshaping things to suit his purposes, whatever those might be…

Last time on Dragon Ball Z

Having just completed escorting a caravan to the town of Clearmeadow, the party awakens in the inn and makes their way downstairs for breakfast. Their only company is are an old man and a tired looking kid. Then, plot happens.

A young tiefling runs into the room and then on into the back. He wears worn leather armor, a warhammer at his built, and rumpled unclean clothes. After some hubbub he speaks with the party. The tiefling is Alanud, assistant to the town guard, Mothere. Until today that is. You see, Mothere is dead. Alanud, not really knowing what to do, had gone to the local preist, Thonarfin, for advice and it was suggested to him that the adventurers that had just arrived might be helpful in resolving this matter.

Alanud related coming to Mothere’s in the morning, to find him, dead on the floor and covered in blood. Intrigued, the party went to speak with Thonarfin in the temple of the old gods, before following Alanud about a mile out of town to Mothere’s house. There they found Mothere’s body, face up on the ground, covered in wounds. It appeared as though someone had rolled him over after death.

Some investigation revealed that the bite wounds on his body were consistent with some sort of canine animal, but too large to have come from a wolf. Furthermore, the door appeared to have been busted in. Examining outside, Qin discovered some tracks leading off behind the house into the woods. In the process of investigating, the party encountered and killed 2 wolves.

After resting briefly, the party delivered Mothere’s body to the temple for burial and instructed Alanud and Thonarfin to warn the villagers to stay in at night.

Then, they were off to speak with Mothere’s neighbors. Stopping at the nearest house to his, they might an old gnomish lady named Kunan, who had some interesting things to say about tieflings and elves and what have you. They worried that she might be an easy victim for whatever had killed Mothere, and so Rin ran off to fetch Kunan’s grandson Gluri from town so that he could take her to his place. As Rin helped Kunan to the wagon, Gluri commented to the party that Mothere had been acting strange, asking paranoid questions in low whispers and asking thing had always been the way they were.

With Kunan to safety, the party resumed following the tracks from Mothere’s. After some travel they came upon a small clearing with a little river next to cliff face. Large, old, doors were set into the cliff. At that point it struck Helmut that making lots and lots of noise was a great idea. And so the party fought a Worg and a Goblin that were hiding in the woods.

Rin noted that state of the Worg was consistent with it being the one that had attacked Mothere. Curious, the party then turned their attention toward the doors. They were large banded wood, sagging on rusted metal hinges. About the doorway were carved intricate designs and above the door was written in Tevarin something roughly translating to “Come in and rest, brother.”

Inside, the party found a small rooming with nature carvings on the walls and a rotting tapestry depicting sihouette by the forest. In a neighboring room were the remains of a fountain and a pool of standing water. After some that the party realized that the figure being depicted was likely the old god of nature, Umrar, the wanderer.

What does the future have in store for our intrepid band of adventurers? On the time will tell. Tune in for the next episode of… Dragonball Z!