Session #8 - Dam it all

We entered the beaver dam.
 
The first room we encountered had a pool of water. Nathaniel said it's how the beavers go in and out of the dam. Ham warned us that there were a couple man-sized leeches lurking in the water. He tried to hurl a log at the leeches, but he made a chunk of the ceiling fall on Gan. The leeches grabbed Ham and me. Mr. Green made short work of them, but not before they hurt me pretty bad.
 
Nathaniel patched me up, but then some beavers came up as we were finishing. The beavers slapped with their tails to knock us prone, and they were tough. They managed to knock Ham out before we took them out.
 
Nathaniel patched Ham up, and we continued forward. We found a living space/nest. Nathaniel said we wouldn't be attacked if we smelled like beavers and that we'd smell like beavers if we rolled in the beaver stuff.
 
In the next room we encountered, we found an even bigger beaver (the size of a horse) as well as a human-sized beaver. They took down Mr. Green/Nathaniel quickly, but Ham got him back in the fight. The druid joined the fight, but we took him out too. After that, the beavers were no longer aggressive and shrank down to their normal size.
 
We figured that we no longer needed to worry about beavers attacking us anymore... though perhaps there were other dangers.
We found a ladder, and it led to a hoarder's nest where the druid was living. We found some healer's gloves with symbols of Chaco on it.
 
We also found a ...journal? Well, some writings. The druid was trying to cause as much flooding as possible to honor the god of water (Chaco).
 
We found another room with some food, a preserving rune, an ever-burning torch, and some money.
 
We tried burning the dam. After a bit, it collapsed (which put out the fire), and the water began draining.
 
Then we paddled our little boats back to Trinity.
 
We talked to the guys at the Primrose branch in Trinity and reported what had happened. He was surprised that "the smelly elf" was the one causing problems (not sure why), but he wrote a letter to report that we had accomplished the mission we had been sent to do.
 
 
We returned to New Aurelia on the 27th of Roggi. The party is tomorrow.
 
Our first stop is the Primrose Expeditions corporate headquarters and talked to Gurt. He paid us the 100gp for the escort job. We told him about the beaver dam and showed the letter, and we got an extra 100gp.
 
We encountered Oswald. He's really excited about the upcoming expedition to establish new trade routes. He's been recruiting other people for the expedition. He wants to introduce us after the party. There have been plenty of applicants. We're going to have final say in who is in the crew.
 
The purpose of the expedition is to prove that a large expedition can make it across the desert and back. Small groups have managed to cross the desert and come back (or so they say), and they say that there are tons of resources on the other side: lush forests, abundant gemstones, etc. These claims have not yet been corroborated. The small groups also claim that the desert is different during the return trip. Our goal is to find periodic (like 5 days apart) oases so that a caravan can refill their water supplies.
 
There are also supposedly cannibals in the desert.
 
 
 
(And we leveled up!)