Play­ers in Atten­dance: Chris Rocco (Pendrynn Hamut), Jason Jurisch (Froimos), Dustin Hau­gen (Barack Ten­der­foot), Jason Alway, (Kurok Stonehammer),Greg Sallee (Davros), Erik Reh­pohl (Kailithe Solace Guard)

Recap: The party after hav­ing suc­cess­fully returned to the mate­r­ial plane and com­pleted the Elder Council’s chal­lenge have been pro­moted to the rank of “Hunters of Blackfield.”

~~~

Bahms­day, the 9th of Ael­ril — In the Elder Coun­cil cham­bers of the Town Hall.

• Davros handed off the trans­lated (from Abyssal sym­bols) com­mu­nique between the Marsh Wiz­ard and the unnamed other party regard­ing strate­gic intel­li­gence in the mid­lands. Detailed  descrip­tions of the eco­nomic inter­ac­tions between the major civ­i­liza­tion cen­ters, geo­graphic land­marks, etc.. This marks the first time the party has heard about:
  • Arbo­rio — An elven set­tle­ment to the north of Port Flume, across the River Anwar.
  • Rock­home — A dwar­ven fortress carved into the cliffs along the River Anwar, north­west of Port Flume.
  • Sumacha — Coastal trad­ing city located where the River Anwar spills into the Mer.
• The party takes advan­tage of access to the Honor Guard Armory. Crow­ley Brand­ham, the guard captain’s aged squire is also the min­der of the armory and explained its intended nature. “Dis­tin­guished sol­diers of Blackfield’s past upon retire­ment or pass­ing con­tributed their arms and armor to lend aid for their brethren yet to come. The Armory’s motto is ‘Take One, Leave One, Pass it On’.” The armory is split into two stock­piles: Con­sum­ables and Arti­facts. The party is allowed to swap one of their mag­i­cal imple­ments in exchange for an arti­fact after each major mis­sion they com­plete for the Elder Coun­cil. The party is also allowed to with­draw up to 2 con­sum­ables dur­ing each of these vis­its as well. It seems that Crow­ley would also appre­ci­ate the dona­tion of any other mag­i­cal imple­ments to the Honor Guard Armory.
• Elder Worth­words hands off a pack­age of papers to Pendrynn in a small satchel.
• The party splits up:
  • All but Pendrynn head towards Find­ings. There they hand-off the last of the rider boxes dis­cov­ered in Balt­hazar Grandy’s lab­o­ra­tory. Tris­tan iden­ti­fies it as an advanced design from the ones the party had pre­vi­ously deliv­ered to him.
  • The party inquired about a means to dis­guise “some­thing” for a sig­nif­i­cant period of time. Tris­tan pulled a small tube from a shelf laden with potions. “The imbiber of this will have their facial fea­tures mor­phed to an unrec­og­niz­able degree for the span of a day. Drink the entire amount or else it’s won’t work properly.”
  • Pendrynn headed to his moth­ers house, and checked on the sta­tus of his comatose grand­fa­ther. Bro­gan con­tin­ues in his cata­tonic state, not react­ing to his grandson’s heal­ing hands, nor the implor­ing words to Erathis seek­ing strength in bat­tle for his heir­loom blade.
• Kailithe and Davros worked on carv­ing glyphs in the party chest and prepar­ing it for mount­ing Davros’ dragon tooth dag­ger. (For use in future rit­ual summoning)
• After that, Barack, Kailithe and Froimos visit Barack’s orphan boys.
  • Kailithe teaches the group about basic hygiene and buys them some water bar­rels, bedrolls and can­dles for light.
  • Barack hands to Toad his excess chain shirt and two dag­gers. Toad waves in the direc­tion of an abnor­mally large youth guard­ing their mea­ger stash (approx 25gp)  “Maybe Clumpy can wear it”.

• The remain­ing mem­bers of the cohort headed out to Sooties, seek­ing the least social Dig Prospec­tor to lead them in search of the remains of the long buried Orcish Set­tle­ment. The set­tled on a disheveled, heav­ily bearded and highly intox­i­cated crea­ture who answers to the name Blod­win. For 10 gold, Blod­win will take the party into the dig to wher­ever they wish to go, no ques­tions asked.

~~~

Pels­day, the 10th of Ael­ril — Morn­ing — The final day of lodg­ing in their mili­tia barracks.

• Barack splits from the party for the day in order to share his “shady” con­tacts with Toad. They bounce from black mar­ke­teer to pro­fes­sional gam­bler and finally to Desand, fel­low scout trainee, mem­ber of Raven Cohort and and long­time prank-rival of Barack. Through a sub­tle com­bi­na­tion of coer­cion and bribery, Barack man­ages to con­vince Desand to aid the orphans by teach­ing them some func­tional “scout” skills.
• The remain­ing mem­bers of the Drag­on­slay­ers headed out of town to explore the local wilds to the South­west of Black­field,  before their planned meet-up with the Orc Warlord.
• While explor­ing the rolling hills, large fly­ing crea­tures could be seen  flut­ter­ing amid tall cliffs to the south, where the low­lands become more clumped up in the face of the nigh-impenetrable moun­tain range barely vis­i­ble in the distance.
• The party can see what looks to be 2 humanoids (one tall, one short) nearly 2 miles away head­ing in a gen­eral west­erly direc­tion and adopt a tra­jec­tory to intercept.

~~~

An excerpt from the diary of Brother Sil­ver­leaf, 12th degree Ascetic of the Order of the Hun­dred Brothers

The morn­ing found us nes­tled into an aban­doned war­ren, prob­a­bly of a small bur­row­ing ani­mal, per­haps a bad­ger or hedge­hog. It’s log­i­cal to assume that the pre­vi­ous occu­pants were pre­dated upon by the Grif­fon flock, rooked on the ridges above.

Fil­lian con­tin­ues to grow in con­fi­dence as he learns more about the wildlife that sur­round us. His youth­ful exu­ber­ance is dif­fi­cult to chan­nel as of late, the boy should receive extra med­i­ta­tion classes with Brother Green­spears upon our return. Also, he con­tin­ues to snore in his sleep, despite the breath­ing exer­cises we have been work­ing on; dan­ger­ous in the wilds to be sure, we must con­tinue to focus on that need in the future.

We spent the after­noon observ­ing the inter­ac­tion of the Greyridge Grif­fon flock. They seem to be stock­ing up on local prey in advance of a pos­si­ble migra­tion. The new hatch­lings must be approach­ing matu­rity and their first flights. Flock­lord Graz­zard seeems to be fly­ing with a notice­able injury to one of his wings, it’s pos­si­ble that one of the younger Griffs chal­lenged him? Three of the younger rooks weren’t observed today, per­haps he’s ejected them from the flock after a failed attempt to usurp the flock.

It was late after­noon when on our return we observed the black plume of Black­field to the north. Fil­lian was first to iden­tify our pur­suers, a heav­ily armed group of Black­field militia.

After if became clear that were were def­i­nitely being tailed, I found a hid­ing spot for Fil­ian and con­fronted our vis­i­tors. Inter­acted peace­ably, but in a con­fronta­tional inter­ro­ga­tion style. Despite my indi­ca­tions that I wasn’t a threat to them or their city, one of the band (a fully-plated war­rior) was unruly in typ­i­cal Black­fielder style, threat­en­ing me with phys­i­cal vio­lence unless I left the area imme­di­ately. His move­ments belied his inex­pe­ri­ence,  I did emply my quar­ter­staff in such a way as to dis­arm him with­out caus­ing any phys­i­cal harm, how­ever, it didn’t dif­fuse the sit­u­a­tion despite the demon­stra­tion of supe­rior mar­tial skill. Note: As other run-ins we’ve had with the Black­field mili­tia, they con­tinue to alien­ate out­siders under the guise of civic duty. Surely they must see that they’re mak­ing no friends with these over­tures? We must look into this fur­ther, per­haps send­ing a brother to the town to com­mu­ni­cate this observation??

Other mem­bers of the party deflated the con­fronta­tion and called off their search for Fil­lian. Once the Black­field­ers departed, I col­lected Fil­lian and con­tin­ued our return trip. The remain­der of the trip was unevent­ful aside from a quick detour to inves­ti­gate an aban­doned hunt­ing blind. Based on the blood trails and lack of tracks away from the site seem to indi­cate that the hunters may have been” “col­lected” by the grif­fons. Make a note for our records, this area may be an unsafe grif­fon feed­ing ground until their migration.

~~~

Mors­day, the 11th of Ael­ril — Late Evening — The Tail­ings Piles out­side the South­ern Gates

• The party walked all night to meet with Garok, who was wait­ing for them, hid­den in the tall refuse piles.
• After shar­ing their plans with Garok, they handed off the potion and asked him to drink it. Garok ques­tioned the lack of an exit strat­egy for their plan, but was goaded into drink­ing it by Kurok, who smartly ques­tioned his courage. Imme­di­a­tel after imbib­ing the brown­ish potion, Garok’s raven hair turned a dirty blonde, his skin light­ened and his face melted to that of a slightly less orcish (yet oddly ugly by human stan­dars) countenance.
• “You didn’t hap­pen to see a bride for a hill giant have you?” they asked Garok, he just stared blankly back.
• The party man­aged to enter through the south­ern gate,met up with Blod­win in the dig upper grounds and made their way into the main shaft via Ele­va­tor 1.
• The party had ques­tioned Garok regard­ing the loca­tion of the under­ground ruins.
  • His­tory (Kailithe and Davros) — The Tribes used to live in caves that were acces­si­ble from nat­ural entrances above ground (so aren’t prob­a­bly too deep). Around 100 feet or so down is most likely.
  • Per­cep­tion (Barack) — He noticed a few cave entrances with very dis­tinct soot lines near the ceil­ing, pos­si­bly indic­i­tive of long term cook­fire use. Some­thing Garok con­firmed was indeed a part of their style of living.
  • Dun­geoneer­ing (Kurock) -

  Kailithe began his rit­ual to sum­mon the hand of fate. They asked it 3 ques­tions, that it had to anwer to the best of it’s ability:

  • Where is the crown? (Pointed town and at an angle)
  • How far away is it? (The hand closed, then held up two fin­gers, then four fin­gers, then zero fingers.)
  • Whats the most direct route to it that we can use? (The hand pointed back to the main shaft.)
• Barack attempted to jump over to another cav­ern, fell, but was saved by his mag­i­cal slip­pers, which tele­ported him to safety.