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====== Dead Beasty Episode ======

Date of Entry: 8/22/2024

Heywood searches the scant remains of the wretched dream-eater , an orb is found and taken away by the raven.

Hargle skins the creature and pilfers around 40 pounds of fur, this is bundled up and carried around by Heywood. Hargle searches the body further and finds 7 silver.

Heywood empties his waterskin, then refills it with the cool magic water. Hargle fills an empty bottle with spring water.

*the symbol of gnosos is a star of david*

The party heads back to the village while the raven carries the small orb in its beak. The trees seem to give way. The sunlight is quickly fading as the party approaches.

The raven flies higher toward the platform of the hut that the party has been sleeping in. Soon the party is jerked up again by vines.

*probably the least ergonomic elevator ride yet...*

Their feet lay gently upon the floor again, there are several exhausted tree folk that evidently were responsible for the ascent. No words are spoken, they point toward the hut and get back to their assigned duties.

Arriving at said hut, the elder grinding herbs and adding them to a boiling pot of profound-smelling tea. She turns to the party and says "Wow congrats you win :)"

*jk*

"We will continue this tradition," taking a pouch from her side and handing it to Martyr, it contains much. There are gemstones, bracers, mushroom bag.

She sees the pelt carried by Heywood and asks to inspect it. Heywood hands it over,

She asks for the party to join in a victory feast.

Hargle unhinges his eyelids [18+6], inspects the gems, there is onyx, amber, and some azerite. Altogether about 200gp of stones.

Martyr takes the bracers, looks super closely at them. He lets the others see them as well. Interestingly, he decides to not let them see the mushroom bag. Like a dick.

Ratfink attempts to restrain Martyr, fails, and goes back to eating his own warts.

*free time...*

Hargle looks at the herbs, it seems like a potion.

Hargle walks up to the elder, awkwardly stands there, and then walks away.

Deciding to wait, the party watches the party hustle and bustle. Hargle searches for the tree-nuts stand in the main thoroughfare, but everyone just gives him some rancid acorns.

Ratfink gets touched by his own shadow.

Heywood tries he dick wet with old elf ladies, and searches for some flowers with assistance from Hargle, and he discovers morning glories. Heywood takes a handful of these.

Enym comes up to the party, chest bare, and decorated with a thick mess of necklaces made of furs and feathers. Bro is dripping.

"Come! The feast is ready." He declares with a rare pep in his step.

The party is led to an enormous live-wood table and chairs, Heywood gets the most massive chair to accommodate his girth. Each chair seems designed for each guest.

The elder addresses us all, "She will be back with good drink, tell us your story in the meantime?"

"We took a quest back in town to investigate a village, then your people had... found us. You know the rest." Says Martyr, and wears a charming smile.

"What the hell happened to that village" Heywood mentions, then the party describes in detail what they had seen in the village, such as the giant arrows.

The elder appears perplexed, and in common denies any involvement.

Hargle [22 insight] inspects her facial expression and can tell she is telling the truth. Enym, however, appears somewhat nervous. However, they cannot tell exactly what might be the cause with such a lad.

Hargle smells mildly of daffodils 

Ratfink walks up to the elder and attempts to gain her favor, wrapping his slimy tendril around her arm. She hesitantly pats the strange beasty, then scoots away. Ratfink insists on getting closer and falls asleep next to her chair.

Hargle asks what her favorite flower is, she replies "The morning glories and such that grow upon the grove I suppose..." Hargle makes the room smell of such flowers while the veins pop out of his head.

Heywood is eating a goblin arm like a turkey leg, and holds morning glories in the other hand.

Martyr grabs Hargle's midriff to still the panic welling within, he notices the food is the dressed goblins from earlier. With the reinforcement from Martyr, he manages to contain his fears, and hesitantly munches into the goblin meat. 

Ratfink attempts to eat some of the fried goblin corpse and it sounds horrific.

Ratfink speaks on how nice it is to just take a day off finally; a nice respite after working countless hours as a messenger rat.

Hargle remembers to pay the messenger rat for delivering his dirty letters, and gives him the Azerite as it is the beasts favorite color.

The elder looks at Hargle, "How have you learned to wield spores."

"After countless years as a druid, and having been out of the dwarven caves for even longer, this seems naturally like the next step of any druidic craft."

Ratfink turns his wet eyes to Hargle, quite certain he just caught a wind of bullshit from that response. The elder seems surprised by the somewhat profound response.

The party drinks of fine alcohol and enjoys the night, there is a festive air and magical bonfires. Much like Enym, the residents are similarly topless and the skin is covered by layers of tribal wreathes.

Heywood is drunk as shit and is pulled away to one of the tents. Ratfink curls up by the feet of one of the elves.

One of the laboring elves decides to join in the festivities and drags the party druid away into a tent as well.

Martyr prays hard as shit for the guidance of Tyr, who tells him to get that club dripping wet. He becomes emboldened and takes a bevvy of elves away from the crowd.

As Heywood opens his eyes to the woodland beauties in the tent; they seem as though to transform from these beautiful women into savage creatures. He manages to contain his nut for an astounding 15 seconds.

Ratfink wakes up, notices he had pissed and shat himself, and falls back asleep near the elves head. She is still too drunk to care.

Hargle gives in to the occasion, eats some kings crown mushroom and paralyzes himself, and is then being harshly ravaged by some arcane elven artifact. He remembers nothing the next day, except an ache in the rear.

Hargle isn't quite as asleep as one might think, though thoroughly battered, and immediately notices the smell of smoke. Being still paralyzed, he is in a bit of a pickle, and only manages to expel a thick cloud of spores in response.

One of Martyrs babes wakes him up with a shake and whispers in elvish which he doesn't understand. He then smells the smoke.

The lady with Ratfink wakes up and is utterly disgusted by the foul excrement of the creature. She summons water and washes herself in an instant. She curses at ratfink, which he comprehends with a spell, "Fuck you bitchass rat ass looking wet dog lookin..."

The elves with Martyr are grabbing what they can to cover themselves and attempting to run away.

Hargle stands up, shaking off the residual poison, belches at 56db, and thus wakes up the hot lady by him. She smells the smoke and also panics and runs outside to see the village.

Heywood also wakes up and exits the tent.

Hargle assesses the flame, which has now spread to multiple trees. He slaps a hand onto the nearest tree, attempting to wither away the bark before it can be used for fuel. He manages to rot a large chunk from it, making the tree unstable and it falls into the others, not managing to put out the larger flames.

> BEGIN COMBAT

Hargle notices that the fire is not of any mundane origin, it is arcane.

Hargle sends the spores that he can toward the trees in the distance, there is a layer of lichen that grows upon the bark but soon has been burnt to a crisp.

Despite the noise and smoke of the atmosphere, Hargle hones in his senses and attempts to identify the scent of gobbos. There are none.

Martyr looks unto the village with a look of horror. Ratfink walks into the village to sniff around.

Martyr approaches Hargle, asks him to reach his hand within, feels something fuzzy, and realizes that it is something non-corporeal. Pulling it out, it is about the size of a walnut and is black in color, Martyr yells at him to throw it.

He throws it about twenty feet in front of himself, from the object a shadow expands and takes on a humanoid shape. It stands still, as though awaiting a command.

Hargle and Martyr look at one another, dumbfounded, and then scratch their heads in unison. Hargle sicks the creature onto the task of finding what foul magic is afoot. The shadow seems to sink into the floor itself, beginning the investigation.

Ratfink is sniffing around the village to identify danger, and notices that the fire is spreading to multiple trees and is inching down the bark. He also sees that three fourths of the population seems to flee from the forest, he follows them without as much as a second thought. Heywood runs with ratfink, grabs him as he runs along despite the beast struggling, and jumps off the tree.

Miraculously, the one hundred foot descent by the monk results in a crater but little more than a scratch to Heywood himself. Ratfink, on the other hand, suffers some whiplash and quite rattled.

Hargle is still standing among the trees, sensing that the shadow is approaching the arena. Dashing, Hargle catches up with the shadow. The shadow approaches the table the party was sitting at, there is a bit of parchment with a fourth of a magic circle left behind. The shadow hands it to Hargle.

Hargle's knowledge of this sort of magic falls short, and isn't certain what the origin might be. He pockets the scrap [Arcane sigil acquired].

Surveying the surroundings, he sees the elder dragging an injured elf from the flames. Hargle whispers a healing word to the unfortunate elf, making the wounds less grave and restoring mobility, the elder notices this exchange. She takes hargle to the platform and they jump off,

Halfway down the elder sprouts beautiful wings and turns into an eagle, Hargle deftly manages to keep his dinner down. The elder turns back to her elven form and all watch the village burn to the ground.

The bottom of the village is visible now, the magical growths of the trees has completely withered away. The debris of these structures falls to the ground.

There is a somber moment as the crowd watches the village collapse to the ground. There is some mournful whispers, about the wards that should have prevented such an event.

Hargle stealthily slips Ratfink the piece of parchment to have the warlock scry it, the latter hears his patron whisper arcane wisdom into his ear revealing the nature of the parchment. It is undoubtedly a scroll of fireball. Ratfink looks at Hargle and rolls his eyes, not actually stating it is a fireball. Hargle nods his head and facepalms in shame for not knowing it was a scroll that makes fire.

Hargle asks the elder if she has anything that had belonged to the twink, Enym. She has a brave look on her face and pulls a string of beads from her pocket. They smell of him.

Hargle offers the beads to the shadow creature, who reaches out from his own shadow and takes them. A moment later, he hands them back to Hargle before swiftly departing from the group in a southeasterly direction.

Heywood asks the elder where they will go now, she answers; "There is a grove nearby that is often used for hunting trips... It will hold those of us that remain."

The party helps move the injured to the grove. As before, the trees seem to part for their passage.

There are strange sounds in the middle of the night of many insects and beasties. The forest is well aroused from the fire.

There are way stones engraved with sigils that flank the improvised camp. Hargle shows off his own druidcraft with the elves, forecasting clear skies for the night. He then uses the druidcraft to put on a performance with the cantrip. It helps put their minds somewhat more at ease before getting rest for the night.

Hargle, during the wee hours of the night, receives a vision of a piece of cloth stuck to a tree branch. He feels that the cloth seems familiar but nothing more. The shadow has faded with the light of dawn.

The party is heading southeast, the elder supports this idea as they seek Enym.

As they go southeast, there is a sound of howling coming from the burnt village. 

> BEGIN COMBAT

Wolves attack, Martyr runs up and crushes its jaw with a club. In response they sink their teeth into his flesh and tear chunks off [19 dmg].

Hargle withers and blooms three of the goblins around martyr, leaching some of their life force to heal him [13 healed].

Heywood runs toward one of the wolves, [nat 20 grapple] grabs it by the throat with force. With the beast restrained, the monk feels a rush of martial fury and crashes his free fist into the beasts spine. Not losing the momentum, he cracks his fists against its body again and leaves it nearly limp. It seems as though its lungs are filling with blood.

A wolf closes in toward Heywood and rips him nearly to pieces [nat 20]

Ratfink uses cloud of daggers on Heywood and three of the wolves, killing the one held by Heywood and Heywood himself. The other wolves suffer in great agony.

Martyr lays a hand on one of the wolves to inflict wounds, leaving a festering wound.

The wolves each tear into Martyr again [9dmg], he's fine though lol.

Hargle withers and blooms two wolves by martyr, restores heywood, restores him further with healing word, and spores one of the wolves for a bit of dmg.

The cloud of daggers continues to shred through the flesh of the wolves, and ratfink dismisses it after one of the wolves falls limp. Heywood is thus spared from being poked again.

Heywood, still prone, manages to grapple one of the wolves and attempts but fails to pummel it.

Ratfink runs up to the wolf and attempts to lift it, but is utterly unable to budge it.

Martyr attempts to swing at one of the wolves, but it deftly moves away.

Hargle uses dissonant whispers to kill the nearest wolf, kills the limping wolf with spores, and runs over to the remaining wolf grappled by Heywood. Shoving the wolf harshly, against the unmovable goliath, crushes the wolf slightly.

The remaining wolf breaks the grapple with Heywood, he attempts another grapple and fails. Instead, he throws a fierce punch against the skull of the wolf. He then hits it with a knee to the jaw, it is struggling to stay conscious.

Ratfink slinks up toward the last of the wolves, conjures up an eldritch blast, and it is left in bits.

bodies searched [5 pelts, ratfink gets 5 gold]

Hargle offers the scant remains of the wolves to Sheogorath, who seems obliged to innoculate the corpses.