MAL Ep. 6

Lot happening this session! To summarize:

1) The group talked to the young woman you rescued in Session 5, who gave her name as Bay Morrissey and told the story of her capture and escape from the Elemental Druids. She did not know the name of the demon she saw there but said he looked just like Adriel, only larger. She also said that Jendarion had claimed the demon was a fey. She offered to help the party fight the necromancer they are pursuing if they would help stop the Druids from chasing her.

2) As they entered the moors, the group noticed themselves being circled at a distance by dog-size drakes. They then observed a fiendish giant bat passing overhead, and decided to attack it. Red, in pterodactyl form, grappled it and forced it to the ground, where the impact broke up the spongy moorland and mired the group in quicksand. The drakes then attacked the bogged-down characters, causing quite a bit of mayhem for a group of four CR5 creatures. Eventually the party drove them off and escaped from the quicksand.

3) The bat turned out to be carrying a letter for "Dayant Arakin" with an unusual gold wax seal on it. Tearing the envelope open, it turned out to be a vaguely worded letter from someone named Harasket about transport through the Veil and a "job that went smoothly," but it did namecheck Lord Chavalk and ask Dayant to keep Harasket informed of developments in Hastenport.

4) The badly battered group broke for the night and slept. Nothing attacked during the night, but Aler and Adriel's horse both suffered infections from being in the quicksand with open wounds. Also, the buckle had mysteriously detached from one of Jon's greaves, with no clue as to how that could have happened. Adriel revealed a previously unknown skill in armorsmithing while the cleric cast two Cure Disease spells, and the group was on their way.

5) The party encountered a 3-foot-tall crone who gave her name as Sallykin, recognized by Jon as the legendary Lady of the Moors. She felt the group out about their mission in the moors, identified herself as a creature of fey, remarked that Red (and only Red) seemed to be afflicted by a fey curse, and requested that she leave the moors within 10 days so that rain might continue to fall. Questioned by Jon about getting in touch with the two fey lords the party had seen in the Dreamscape, Jon's memory curse caused him to forget their names. Avery the warforged came to the rescue and provided their names, admitting that he had been the one snooping in Jon's house and read his notes. Sallykin identified the female fey as the Queen's daughter, and said that the grandmother she was referring to who had power over raising spirits to mortal life must be the Morrigan. She gave the party a ritual to call her again, though she declined to offer aid to them in their quest.

6) Approaching the tower, the party found a creepy graveyard where the Veil seemed thin. Aler cautiously explored it, and found the inscriptions "follow the path" and "to thy perfection" on its two gates. The party then discovered their own names on the mossy tombstones. Suitably spooked, half the party decided to follow the path through the graveyard while the other half decided to skirt it. Swarms of undead mosquitoes flew through the Veil and attacked the three PCs (plus Bay) who had decided to skirt the graveyard. The swarms were eventually dispelled, by the combination of a shower of holy water, force attacks, and galloping back through the graveyard.

7) The party approached the tower, stopping about 500 feet away on the other side of a low hill. The tower appears to be four stories high, with arrow slits, open windows, and crenellations on top. Jon spotted what he believes to be murder holes over the door. Aler sent Syla the owl up in the air to look down on the tower and used Speak With Animals to question her, learning that there were five skeletons (three currently holding bows) patrolling the top of the tower, and a large round circle in a wheel shape (previously identified as a symbol of death) in the center of the floor.

And there we broke for the evening. Onward! Laura