The Font of Four Find a Fantastic Artifact

The party of four adventurers bickered frequently and argued over every decision that might be made. They had come from completely different walks of life. Gretan was a wizard of gnome heritage. Rae was a cleric who had been raised in a religious orphanage along with Bayfrun, a younger woman who liked to cook and play jokes on those who weren't polite. Kricket was only 13 but she was an assassin. Her mentor had died in the battle that had brought the four adventurers together. The bottleneck of the crossroads was not fit to protect themselves but the four adventurers responded to a ferocious attack and subsequent battle. When the four successfully fended off the attackers, they investigated and learned that the attackers were a strange kind of hobgoblin who each had a tattoo of a hanged man on their uniforms.   Gretan had been a great scholar whose mentor sent him out into the world when he sensed trouble. Rae and Bayfrin had been told their final test for clerichood was to go out into the world and help those who couldn't help themselves. And Kricket had been on a journey to assassinate someone. Her first job. She had a mentor who was meant to guide her through her first job in the secret society she belonged to. But he had died in the fray that put the four unlikely people together. In spite of the four adventurers bickering, they battled together well, in an organic way. The four agreed to investigate what was behind the hobgoblins with the tattoos and uniforms and set off together to do so. Over the months, they formed bonds and learned to trust each other.   Kricket had never been to school and had never even heard of the school of the Doubtful Knight. Gretan knew of the school and had learned of the Juniper Observatory. He and his fox familiar who seemed more than just a familiar, led the party through the mountains without alerting the observers in the Juniper observatory of their presence. Rae cast a spell that allowed them to pass the area without being seen.They didn't want to be observed because their investigation required speed, efficiency, and secrecy.   The Churning Wastes were dangerous. The party's investigations throughout the middle part of the country had led them to the Wastelands. The Churning Wastes were fascinating but the group wasted no time on sights. They had been told of a rumor that a city once existed under the Wastes and held secrets.   It was between a fathomless burning pit and what appeared to be a giant moving hill, that the party discovered water. The water was sordid. Clear as mud. But the erstwhile bickerers knew they had found what Kricket's strange changing map had shown them once they began using it to try to make discoveries. The map, unbeknownst to the others, was Kricket's assassination contract.   Out of the muck, several statuettes to gods nobody remembered and ruined books from a library were found. And below even the library, were the eggs. Something was moving deep below the muck and the four knew they must hurry. With the ingenuity of Gretan's engineering trained mind, they used block and tackle to remove three of the big roundish oval shapes letting the mud and gunk drip from them as they moved them to drier land. That is when the four were spotted by those at the Juniper Observatory some 7000 feet away. Though the sight caused a reaction among the fellows at the observatory,  there was little any could do from that distance though the elder of them used all his strength to try to combine magics to bring those four figures to them. He failed and fell into a deep coma.   The four, bickering amongst themselves as was their way, were oblivious to the fact that they had been observed and were even now being watched as they carefully trudged a path out of the Churning Wastes with the three eggs and other artifacts. It took several days to crest and return to the other side of the mountain range. When they felt safe enough to set up camp, Gretan used his advanced ability to identify magical items on the statuettes first. One looked rather like a frog to Kricket but it turned out to be an idol to Ioun.   An old God that none of them knew of. A lantern was next. Gretan's identification seemed to both intrigue and repulse Gretan. Just as its crystal shards pulsed out strange rhythms. He set it down gingerly and told the others not to touch it. Then he turned his attention to the eggs. There was a lot of magic here, just as there had been in the pulsing lanterns.   The eggs, two green, one black could only be dragons, he declared though none of them had seen a dragon in living times. Nobody had. But Gretan was sure. The bickering group came to a consensus to keep the eggs and made elaborate arrangements move the eggs out of the Churning Wastes and straight into the history books of Autauga.
Item type
Magical


Cover image: by Kato MacKenna