We Left, and Then We Didn't

New Information Learned/Confirmed

• The emotion storms depend on the part of the forest one is in when experiencing them. Their magic predates the Artifice, when Taika was walking the land, and Tara believes they are tied to the goddess's experiences on the Prime.
• We happened upon an area of the landscape scarred by Osud's death. At certain times of year, storms triggered by Osud's remnants trying in vain to reincarnate yield fire and magma. There are mixed stories about these areas⁠—some have ancient relics or artifacts, supposedly, some offer enlightenment in the form of prophecy or ancient truth, but others have only death and despair. In short: magical, religious, dangerous, possibly bullshit.
• There are absolutely Baraba cultists in this forest; we saw the symbol of Fury, but I would not be surprised to find other gods represented.
• Duraz is tactless about it, but he has been ascertaining properties about what Tara is based on... let's call it "direct observation," though some might also call it "harassment."
• Do not shoot force arrows from within the dome.

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All day yesterday we knew it was coming, but today the emotion storm started in earnest. It's been weird to watch manifest in the party, so many of us as terrible as we are at dealing with happiness. It was fairly uneventful on 4 Gaiztoak⁠—well, I guess I can't claim that for sure, because I spent a hefty portion of the day talking on the mirror...

Roscoe literally stumbled into a portal to the Feywild. I guess I had assumed that anyone would be able to pass through it by dumb luck, but with some divine prodding it became clear that people can only pass freely if they are with me. I thought the easy solution would be to pass through and determine our path from there, but in true CYA fashion, that plan got fucked.

If we had been able to pass through the portal as a group, it turns out we could have expedited our departure from this forest, but Duraz durazed, and his innate refusal to budge resulted in the portal not letting him through? I'm not totally sure, honestly. But the long and short of it is that while Seksgar and I spent some time in the Feywild, mostly to indulge me, we ultimately had to cross back to the Prime, and once the happiness phase of the emotion storms ended, the portal was gone.

In a shocking turn of events, Runni has been fucking following us for days. The little delightful asshole popped out of a bush. She did bring word of things in the Feywild, though. The pixies and fairies fought, and the pixies' tree was destroyed, but all of them survived, thankfully. She also warned us that if we continued on our path, we would come up on some "creepy mist." (Note: This characterization was not wrong.) We then expedited our travel with some summoned mounts, which I have still not gotten over. He could do it the entire godsdamned time. Delightfully, his summoning didn't work well still, and in addition to horses, he brought a blink dog I befriended ages ago, named Rory! (Of course, Roscoe and Rory are basically best friends by now.)

Once we finally arrived at the aforementioned creepy mist, it had a definite oppressive air to it, like it overpowered the happiness of the emotion storm that had previously felt all encompassing. The mist hung over a dried out lake bed, pure white like a salt flat, which contrasted even more with the dark gray, shadowy mist. It made me uncomfortable from the get go, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why, though it strongly reminded me of the Shadowfell.

Blackthorne had a surprising amount of information relevant to this particular situation, including:

• He has encountered mist like this before, usually over water. When ships traveled through it, people felt haunted or complete despair. The longer a vessel was in the fog, the more of an effect it had not only on the crew but the ship itself, tarnishing, eroding, or otherwise degrading the ship.
• He briefly explained a "Shadowfell shard" that he had liberated from a ship. Said ship had a "lot of weird Baraba markings" that hadn't meant much to him at the time. He remembered as well that the shard was considered very valuable, and it was capable of at least temporarily cursing people when used by the right type of magic user.
• He has a map that he got on the same ship, and until being here in this landscape, he hadn't been sure what it was of. The map seems to indicate that there is treasure or something of great import in the mist, and the map carries the same symbol of Fury we had found in obsidian on the ground.

We sent Runni and Keenor on a quick recon mission, and both came book looking rattled⁠—something I haven't seen in either of them. Runni described a disorientation sense of up and down being mixed up, and there was a genuine fear at one point that they wouldn't make it back. The effect seemed to encircle certain places to protect them. They also confirmed that another storm is rolling in. There are three places where the mist apparently parts. She described a cave with a skull mouth entrance, a big diamond shape with statues of people in fighting positions inside (which concerns me that they're actually people), and another place with a cage within a cage within a cage. She also mentioned a fighting pit?

The lake is about 30 miles wide, so going around is a waste. Also, I can't not go in, not when I know for sure the Baraba are involved. I wasn't given that many direct objectives from Oghma, but this is certainly one. Blackthorn did rightly point out that combining the effects of this mist with the wrong emotion storm could have dire consequences, so we skirted the outside of the mist a while, heading to where we could dive in toward one of the points marked on his map. Seksgar determined there are definitely tracks, likely of perimeter patrols, and whoever left them travels predominantly in the shadow.

I didn't get far into a rest before Blackthorne and Tara woke me. A strange, darker black mist had caught their eye. It was uncannily similar to a part of Eolas that the Protectors avoided if at all possible. One of the more powerful necromancers worked out of that part, and in the area there was a mist with a distinctly undead vibe. If pressed, I would describe it as... vampiric? It drained life force from those caught in it. Seksgar was the one who first spotted veins pulsing with something akin to a heartbeat mixed with lightning, but in deep red. Obviously we ended up needing to dispatch it.
 
Margin notes in Sylvan and a cypher, for Rue

• I don't know when you had time to teach Runni to be a better sneak, but it really worked, jerk.
• Update on what happened to the pixies.