Session008

Session Eight - 14th July 2023

SHORT VERSION

The group decided to keep an eye on Kadra's House for the suspicious girl who might be Kadra's former teacher, Merriath the Quick. Drex needed special inks to transcribe the Identify ritual and sent Cormir to buy them from Bazil the Bizarre, who was still acting strangely (and had moved the items he had got agitated about the last time they were in his shop).

Morthos visited the bakery and met the obviously upset Messi Barrister, and her husband Phelm, who offered the heroes free lodging and baked goods to deter burglaries. Whilst Drex transcribed his spell, the others spotted the girl near Kadra's house and confirmed her presence in a tent in the refugee camp. Drex tried to determine her true identity through speaking with her, and subsequently by using Detect Magic, but only sensed the recent casting of an illusion spell.

Morthos informed Kadra, who became distraught. They considered staying at Kadra's house but after going to the pub instead, found her unconscious and attacked by Merriath the Quick. Merriath burnt the house down with a Wall of Fire and then escaped with Kadra's body through a Dimension Door and Drex unsuccessfully tried to attack her. In the chaos, a fireball nearly kills Drex and Cormir as well as a dozen nearby civilians and Morthos quickly tended to their wounds to stabalise them.

LONG VERSION

- Link to audio file - 

Still in Tomar's Crossing, with the afternoon starting to wane, Morthos suggested that it would be a good idea to surreptitiously keep an eye on Kadra's House to see if they could spot the girl that Kadra suspected as being her former teacher Merriath the Quick, who she believed was stalking her in the guise of a teenage girl and literally out for her blood. Kadra had already given Drex the means to add the Identify ritual into his book, having asked the party to keep an eye out for the young girl - and maybe make some enquiries to see if they could either reassure Kadra or protect her.

Looking around, the group decided that the village square would be a good place to observe from, using the small platform in the middle as somewhere to sit. The smell of baking from the nearby windmill and bakery wafted across the breeze, and having something to munch on seemed like a good way to make their loitering seem less suspicious.

Impatient to transcribe his new ritual, Drex realised he needed special inks to do so - and that the only place to purchase them, was from Bazil the Bizarre. However, since he had already been banned from that shop, Drex decided to stay sat on the stage and keep an eye on things, whilst Cormir (with Drex's seraph Starborn on his shoulder) visited Bazil the Bizarre on his behalf, and Morthos headed to the bakery to grab something nice to eat.

At Basil's Potions, as Cormir ordered some of the special inks that Drex would need, he noticed that Basil was still acting pretty bizarre, using ventriloquism to make his dead fox "speak", and that the items that he had earlier strongly protested were "not for sale" were now no longer on the shelf where they had been.

Meanwhile, Morthos went around the windmill and visited the attached bakery, where he encountered Nessa Barrister, the wife of the miller, sat crying infront of a stove. Seeing him walk in, she attempts to pull herself together, just as her husband and three children walk in through from the windmill side of the building. Sending his upset wife away with his children, Phelm Barrister deals with Morthos, explaining that since the melting of the glacier, the deliveries of grain had dried up and they only had a limited amount of flour left, so they were only doing limited baking each day. Having recognised Morthos (not hard to with his tail and purple hair) as one of the "heroes of Fort Frostfell", Phelm mentions that since the influx of refugees into the village, he was getting worried about burglaries, and as such he had taken to sleeping in the bakery itself, rather than in their normal sleeping area in the back of the building. He suggested that if the Heroes of Fort Frostfell were interested, he would allow them to sleep for free in the bakery, so their presence would deter any would-be-thieves. He would even make sure that, whilst he still had the ingredients, he would happily supply the three heroes with free baked produce. He would also supply some camp beds for them to sleep on.

Morthos thought this sounded good, but said that he would need to check with his companions. Having purchased six iced buns, he returned to the village square, and informed the others, Cormir having also returned by now with the special inks. Drex, still eager to transcribe the Identify spell into his Book of Shadows, heads back to their room at the Weary Traveller Inn, leaving Morthos and Cormir to keep watch for the girl. A little while later, the two were rewarded for their vigilance, spotting the girl that matched the description first watching Kadra's house, then disappearing back into the Safeharbour refugee camp.

By the time Drex had finished transcribing his spell, they had managed to identify which tent she had gone into. Drex came out of the inn and moved into the refugee camp, pretending to look for an "Esmerelda" whilst the others hung out at the back of The Weary Traveller, looking on from a distance. Drex managed to confirm the teenage girl was in the tent in question and even spoke with her (as well as a few of the other curious refugees), but was unable to determine from the conversation whether or not she was or was not the disguised blood-drinking-sorcerer Merriath the Quick, or in fact just a young homeless orphan named Ellie Mircar.

Deciding to use magic to investigate further, Drex took a while to cast the ritual to enable him to detect magical auras whilst the others tried to keep an eye on the tent to confirm that Ellie/Merriath was still there. As he walked back into the camp, he caught the fading aura of some sort of illusion spell coming from the tent, which then appeared to be empty when he approached it more closely. As he returned to the others, they were at a loss at what to do - although the faint aura Drex had detected convinced them that Ellie must be Merriath the Quick after all. Morthos visited Kadra to tell her what they had discovered, and Kadra became quite distraught at the idea that her old mentor was somewhere close by.

Morthos wondered if he should suggest the party stay the night at Kadra's house, and returned to his two companions to discuss the matter over a drink at Journy's on the other side of the village. Returning a mere half hour later, whilst the still somewhat exhausted Drex returned to their room at the Inn, Morthos, accompanied by Cormir, knocked on Kadra's door, but got no answer. Pulling out his lockpicks, Morthos picked the lock and the two made their way into the hallway, only to hear a slight noise coming from behind the living room door.

Pushing the door open, they see Kadra lying unconscious at the feet a dark haired, dark skinned woman covered in patches of red scales. She fires three scorching rays at the two of them - though misses Morthos catching only Cormir instead. Morthos ducks nimbly into the room to slash at the woman before ducking back into the corridor. Cormir also rushes forward, striking the woman with his sword and invoking one of the new Giant runes he had recently mastered, causing fiery shackles to momentarily bind her before she broke them off. Retaliating, Merriath the Quick casts two spells in quick succession - a wall of fire that dominated the room, separating her from Cormir and Morthos, and then a dimension door. Half-dragging Kadra's unconscious body, she disappears through the portal. As the burnt Cormir stumbles out of the now burning house with Morthos, Drex rushes out of the inn to join them, along with a large number of civilian on-lookers.

Realising from the description of the spell that Merriath can't have escaped far, Drex rises up into the air and scans around looking towards the tent where "Ellie" had been staying. Seeing a shadowy figure half-carrying something large near the tent, Drex lets rip with an Eldritch blast, but only manages to punch a hole in a nearby tent. The figure whirls around as Drex drops back down towards ground level and sends a fireball across to detonate just in front of Kadra's home, catching Drex and Cormir in its fiery blast (along with at least a dozen civilians). It is a powerful spell, and both Drex and Cormir collapse in pain from the extent of their burns, Morthos managing to avoid most of the damage.

Realising his two friends were on deaths door, Morthos scrabbles to grab out one of the healing kits they had liberated from Fort Frostfell, and quickly applies bandages to first Drex and then to Cormir to prevent them from slipping into death...

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