April 1st, 2023
Bellum, Frigus 2nd, 1193
We arrive at the dwarven ruins; most of the masonry outside is in bad shape, except for one statue of a dwarf. We search the tower and find that a giant spider has made it’s home here–we kill it. Inside another room we find a mummified dwarf holding shards of a broken vial and parchment. The parchment reads, in Dwarven: “Forgive me, dark father of the forge, my toils shall never be enough”. He also has a silver light hammer with a symbol of a forge wreathed in flames.
Ty sneaks into a room with a trap, which she disarms, and then another room with someone small sleeping next to a bunch of bird bones. She sees some sacks on the ground and takes them and leaves. Inside the sacks are a magic ruby and masterwork stonemasonry tools. In a room with a lot of stagnant water we find one book that hasn’t been ruined; an illuminated book of El hymns, worth 100gp.
In a room with darkwood pews there is an altar, a large ceremonial anvil, which is defaced and has 5 small depressions; the ruby that we found fits perfectly in one of them. Once we place the ruby, we hear a chorus of dwarves singing hymns and it makes us feel really good. Then, the room gets really dark and 2 darkmantles appear and attack.
In another room we find a worg guarding the mushrooms and it asks us to kill the darkmantles, the spider, and some bats. When we return with the evidence, he turns on us and attacks–we kill him and gather the prized mushrooms. We find a dwarven prayer book of Kovar (a god we do not know of); within is a note: “El is no longer worthy of our devotion. Only Kovar can deliver us from the failings of King Grimstone”.
Ty finds a secret door that leads to a prison room with 3 dwarven skeletons that attack us. There is another skeleton that didn’t animate; it has a Ring of El. Ralzer recognizes the ring, they used to be gifts from Captains of the House of Waters Deep (top ranking priests of El).
Before we leave, we give the place a good search. We wake up the sleeping person, who turns out to be a kobold named Gurtlekep, and Sigmund strikes up a conversation. That wandering zombie shaman was from the same tribe and they were left here. According to Gurtlekep, the shaman drank poison, died, became a zombie, and Gurtlekep put the sign on him. Sigmund gives him back the gem, which is no longer magical. Now that it’s safer, we decide to camp here for the night. We make some repairs for Gurtlekep and chat with him; he is from the western edge of the Gannett Mountains and his tribe abandoned him here.
Iustitia, Frigus 3rd, 1193
We bid our goodbyes to Gurtlekep and make our way to Koldun’ya’s cottage; he gives Sigmund a throwing knife as a gift. While on our way a wyvern passes pretty low to the ground overhead–it must be hunting something.
After a few hours we find a cottage and it is not an inviting scene. No one seems to be home, so we let ourselves in. There is a large wicker chair with a similarly sized corpse wrapped in linen on it. Upon closer inspection, it’s just a bundle of branches made to look like a body. While searching, her cauldron starts attacking us. It takes a long time, but we manage to break it. Sigmund finds what we need in the “kitchen” and a shrunken head that can be used to deliver a message. He leaves a short blurb about how we’re sorry we had to take this and how to reach him at Westermoor. We quickly leave.
On the way back, a really big mosquito sticks Ralzer and then gets killed.
Mors, Frigus 4th, 1193
We arrive at Westermoor and Laurel is ready to get to work. Her and Sigmund craft enough poultices for the rest of the town, which is noticeably less populated. According to Laurel about 30 people have died. Ty shows Laurel the flaming hawk signet right and she recognizes it as belonging to Caleb Thorne, a hunter who moved to town and went missing. She isn’t sure where he’s originally from. We talk to her for a while about our adventure and then head to the inn to sleep.