by James "Tao" Murphy
OOC
I love new sites; I love not knowing what is around the next corner. At this point in my realms experience I don’t get that very often. I got it at this event. Unfortunately this site was not quite ready. I am very impressed with the work that had gotten done. I can see where this will be an amazing questing site in the future.
This event did have the fatal flaw that many new event holders/staff have fallen into, not enough staff. The Event holders, were doing all the roles pretty much themselves. It unfortunately also had the problem of not enough players. Friday night there were only 4 PC’s.
IC
I think we accomplished the goal, I think we did good, I think.
I set off to Arenea on Friday night. We were met by Alucard and were informed that there were elementals out that were causing problems, and that some vine corruption had happened. The four Adventurers that attended Friday night were: Squire Vesper, Squire Thoril, Clove, and myself. Alucard introduced us to a shaman that would be accompanying us and showing us which way to go. While his name was given soon we were calling him Moth Daddy and he seemed very ok with this.
We climbed a hill in the dark and found an old road that had a few bits of light here and there but it was very dark under the trees. We encountered some air elementals? Some vines, some wolves, many of them were only effectable by axes, fortunately I still had my axe which was a gift from Red the foremen of the woodworking crew I hired last year. We found a wizard which helped us with a puzzle to open a barrier where we found more monsters.
In this next section we found a creature that was only effectable by something, not sure exactly what because we were all hitting it with different things at the same time. It dropped a small treasure chest, which Thoril was able to open, but it was not a chest but a very small mimic that bit and killed him. We were able to get him back up. We found some local currency, some jewelry, and a key.
Now the wizard was a little further down the path, and said that he had figured out how to make a barrier that could only be removed by stating a specific word. He of course had a riddle to give us a clue to the word. It was soon solved and we were back to camp.
We split up the coins, jewelry, and Thoril tried to raise and make a pet of the mimic. While it came back to life, it bit and killed him again.
At this point Squire Vesper had to leave, but Sir Magus Rosetta arrived and joined the conversation. At this point, Thoril and Rosetta starting talking magic theory and I decided to go to bed.
In the morning a few more arrived, the first couple to swell our ranks, were Sir Elwin O’Bearikin and an adventure that I had never met named Arder (?). We related all that had happened the night before when the wizard from the night before held an auction for a gold five foot axe. The opening bid was 75 gold, however as I was the only bidder I was able to talk them down to 65 gold. I passed off my normal axe to Ardur(?). While this was going on, a few more adventures swelled our ranks, Laird Sir Magus Rel, Sir Lady Aymisara, and Priest Laiken en’Naur. It was starting to look like very competent group. We were still lacking in a specialized healer, and had no blacksmithing except for a very few spells from Thoril.
At this point we decided to set out, someone had learned that we needed 50 coal coins, (new currency?) and three small bottles. We wandered along the road for a while encountering more vines and timber wolves which somehow where also able to throw fireballs. We found the first bottle very quickly; the other two did take some magic to locate. About 3 PM we had gathered all we needed.
We brought everything back to camp and the wizard was able to make a “coal”dren, add the potions and was able to magic the key so it would open something. He let us know that the something would be ready at 9PM.
Alucard showed up first he tried to auction off a golden spear with a skull at the end which no one was interested in. He also let us know that the promised feast would probably happen around 5pm and that he expected nothing else to happen between.
At this point I received word that I was temporarily needed back in Blackwood. As Stonewood was on the way I asked Elwin to accompany me. On the road we ran into Kang of Creathorne who was in the area. While we were able to travel West without any issues, the rest of the party learned that a local city was under siege by bandits. Before they set out to save the city they were joined by 2 more adventures, Your friend Jean C’est Magnifique Try Baptise, and a newer adventure named Sk..(cough cough) who you might remember for winning the obstacle course at Blackwood tournaments.
From what I understand the party ran into several waves of bandits, a puzzle that had a potion of repair armor, a chaos puzzle (higher or lower) and a bit of gold. At the castle was a hard fought battle where the bandits had strong magic support but the party prevailed.
We were able to return to camp at about the same time the party got back from saving the city. We got a chance to hang out in the prepared bamboo groves that protected us from the sun and were much cooler than sitting in the sun. About an hour later Alucard presented us with a competition. Each of us was presented with a 24 ounce can of tea that appeared twisted. The completion was to hold the can out in front of us without bending our elbow. If we bent our elbow we were supposed to drink the tea. Clove was able to last the longest and was presented with a drinking horn and a throwable gold leaf.
A bit after the competition dinner was served, some of my favorite things, breakfast for dinner; bacon, eggs, English muffins, and pancakes.
A while later after it got dark we set out to stop the corruption. Unfortunately several of the party had had to leave and we were down to seven; Myself, Thoril, Clove, Rosetta, JB, Sk..(cough cough) and Kang was able to join us.
In the dark the path was difficult. Sometimes it felt like I was swinging at darkness, also our lack of proper healing, or a blacksmith definitely hurt.
We fought wave after wave after wave of vines or wolves, or shadows in the darkness. We finally came to the barrier that the key was going to open. We had two obstacles; first we had forgetten the key back at camp, and two the key by itself was not all we needed as the lock was actually a puzzle. Fortunately Rosetta was able to cast some Magus level magic that created the key from a stick on the ground. After some divine aid requested by Thoril, several people trying to work on the puzzle in the dark, a few interruptions by more vines and a monkey, and about 30 minutes later Kang was able to figure out the puzzle and open the lock.
Inside the last area, we found an undefeatable monster that killed most of us. Rosetta was able to hide from the monster and get us back up momentarily, but the undefeatable monster dropped us again. Some force that I did not recognize, raised all of us, and fixed our armor. At that point we were told that in near total darkness we had to move black boulders to a particular spot in the circle, all while the undefeatable monster was swinging at us. Kang was amazing at keeping the monster busy, while the rest of the party found the boulders in the dark, and moved them to the spot. After all the boulders were in place we also had to hit the boulders with axes to stop the monster.
In the end, we preserved.
Sir Duke Tao Ya Kang