Session 17 - The One Where Carro Won a Cuddly Dragon

7th Feb 2021 19:15 - 21:45

In-game timeline: DR1489 Elesias 21 - Eleasias 23

Our "Heroes" spend time in Neverwinter and LEVEL UP to Level 4. They each enquire about their respective interests in the town - Carro and TC try to find a half-orc named Togruk; Mahtis asks around for information about her sister, Ruhin; and Kandi asks about his friend, Starshine, and a certain "Wise Woman of the West, previously of the North". They each find out a bit of information and some leads that they can progress.

To cut long stories short, no news on Starshine, but the Wise Woman may reside on an island of evil Clerics of Shar named Friendship Isle; Ruhin was aboard a ship called The Emperor of the Waves which was raided by pirates four months ago and is now a floating wreck with no apparent survivors; and Togruk went to a nearby town of Flint Rock with a halfling and a gnome over a week ago and nothing has been heard from them since.

They decide that most urgent, and most likely to bear fruit in the short term, is finding Togruk in Flint Rock and so, after selling off the group loot and arguing about how many healing potions they should buy (they settled on 2, or 3 - I can't quite remember as I was dozing off at the time) the party headed out east towards Flint Rock.

After a day's travelling, they settled down by the side of the road in the evening for a night's rest, hoping to reach Flint Rock late the following morning. They had passed signs which indicated that there was a carnival going on in the town and so they were keen to get there to enjoy the fun of the fair (the characters, at any rate. The players were less than enthusiastic).

That night, as Carro scanned his eyes over the nearby woods for signs of evil creatures and strange goings-on, he spotted a mysterious creature in the distance, moving through the trees. Carro couldn't quite make out what it was, though it seemed to be humanoid, walking with a slight limp, pale and medium sized. It didn't seem to see the party, so Carro just watched as the creature moved purposefully through the woods and eventually disappeared in the trees. Carro was on edge for the rest of the night, though didn't see anything else untoward.

The following morning he passed the information on to the others. Some were keen to investigate straight away, Kandi was keen to eat his banana for breakfast. So they all had some breakfast and headed out after Kandi's banana-appetite was sated.

The headed into the trees and looked for tracks of what the creature could have been. With Carro's refined tracking senses in the woods, they picked up the trail fairly easily and it led to an abandoned campsite. Looking around the camp, there was an obvious sign of struggle - some blood was on the  ground, and weapons seemed to be randomly discarded. There also seemed to be some sort of ambush plan sketched out in the earth.

Carro detected that two medium sized bodies were dragged away from the campsite by a single, third, humanoid. These dragging tracks led to a small clearing where he found horse tracks leading away towards the direction of Flint Rock. All of this seemed to have taken place the previous night.

With all of this really interesting, but not necessarily relevant, information being processed in their brains, the group pressed on towards Flint Rock, arriving in the early afternoon.

Flint Rock is an obvious dwarven mining town, but this particular day was awash with bustle and activity. There was indeed a carnival in town and it seemed to be busy, despite it apparently being the last day or so of its presence here. The group decided to spend some time wandering around the carnival, mingling and listening out for any useful bits of information about a half-orc, though they stopped short of asking direct questions.

At the sight of a beer tent, Kandi and TC ignored all the hard work that the carnival workers had put in to designing all the side-stalls and competitions and wanted to head straight there. Carro and Mahtis persuaded them all to at least look at one of the many stalls, and the ranger tried his hand at the target practice.

Despite the owner - a jolly little gnome who unsurprisingly seemed to inspire disdain in TC - insisting that Carro use his obviously inferior (and, some ungracious people would say, deliberately rigged) weapons, the elven ranger managed to score a very good two shots out of three on the targets - one of them being such a perfect hit that the small crowd that had gathered round were very impressed. Carro won a small, fluffy green dragon toy which he proudly tucked under his arm for the rest of the day.

Kandi and TC had had enough of the carnival activities, despite only visiting a single stall, and retired to the beer tent, but discovered that it was fairly quiet at the moment, so they were once again persuaded by the others to visit the main attraction - a "Cave of Monsters" in the large tent at the centre of the fair.

This turned out to be a walk-through 'museum' of sorts, which displayed a number of different creatures, in increasing levels of impressiveness and fear-inducing (at least they would have been fear inducing if i) the DM was able to narrate the descriptions of the monsters better, and ii) the players were actually aware of what the monsters were!). 

The goblin looked bored; the sabre-toothed tiger looked vicious; the two-headed ogre looked tough; the hook horror from the deep was scary but the party had no idea what it was; the hell-hound was obviously a painted worg and therefore not so worrying; the dinosaur was very large and very impressive and the beholder at the climax of the tour was not as frightening as it would have been if the party knew how dangerous a beholder is. Oh, and Carro and TC spotted that it was a fake, which sort of destroyed the illusion for them.

But overall the trip through the 'cave' was….ok, not as exciting as the DM had planned. 

They retired to the beer tent to TC's and Kandi's relief at last, all of the other stalls being ignored. 

At this point technology gave out and we had to leave our "Heroes" gathering information in the beer tent. At  least the fact that they had taken part in two of the fair's numerous attractions, and Carro was proudly carrying around a stuffed toy meant they had some conversation starters with the locals and the visiting fair-goers, which may help them in finding out more about the possible whereabouts of Togruk.