Session 3

“Not everyone gets a chance to see a real otyugh. Even fewer live to tell the tale. I managed both, the night my friends and I fled Hallow Gate through the sewers beneath Neverwinter.”

The thing we faced in the dark was wrong even by monster standards—twisted by foul magic, its thoughts clawing at our minds before its tentacles reached our flesh. Later I learned that the locals called him Zeugl. A cautionary tale , a legend mothers used to scare misbehaving children.

Torr screamed as it spoke to him, and though none of us understood it then, the beast’s presence shook him more than others. Immeral was snared first, dragged toward snapping teeth, but we tore him free together. Kaylen fared worse—lifted and smashed against stone like a rag doll—yet even that did not break him. Fate, or perhaps the roots choking the walls, slowed the creature just long enough for us to find our rhythm. Steel, spell, and stubborn will did the rest.

When the otyugh finally fell, the sewers grew quiet in a way only death can bring. We followed the tunnels onward, found the gate, and crawled through a pipe that spat us out beyond the walls. One by one, like fugitives in a bad ballad, we leapt into the moat and vanished into the reeds. Soaked, shaken, and free, we lay there listening to the night, knowing the worst was behind us—yet uncertain whether to press on toward the Blue Water Inn, or steal a few hours of rest before the world caught up with us again.

“Between us and friendly folk, warm food, and perhaps a place to lay down, stand the Neverwinter woods.”

They are not the kind sung about in old tales. No ancient malice in every shadow, no whispering trees plotting our end. Yet they are thick enough to swallow a man a few steps off the path, and close enough to the city that danger wears boots more often than claws. The ground is uneven with roots and reeds, the air damp with river mist, and every sound carries farther than it should.

We had a choice, plain as daylight. Move now, while the sun still watches over us — safer footing, clearer sight, but easier for hounds and riders to follow our trail. Or disappear into the undergrowth, hide through the day, and walk by night — trading the certainty of pursuit for the company of unseen things and the quiet judgment of the forest.

Either way, the woods would test us.
The only question was whether we wished to be seen… or merely sensed.

"I looked at the others as we stood there, dripping and breathless, and weighed our chances."

Immeral "Imrel" ’s spells had allready saved us more than once, precise and stubborn as the man himself, while Harlan Deepcoin ’s magic flared wilder, unpredictable, yet no less vital when things turned desperate. Brother Kaylen Vera had taken a monster’s fury full-on and stayed on his feet, faith and grit holding him upright when bone and sinew should have failed. And Torren "Torr" Hallowfield … Torr surprised me most. Locks, chains, hinges — he handled them with a craftsman’s touch, nimble and patient, a rare talent for a boy raised at a village forge.

"But my thoughts kept circling back to those we left behind. "

The guards would pick up our trail soon enough — the stink of Otyough's blood in the sewers will help them. The question was not if, but how fast. And how far they would be willing to chase.

Our arrest had been quiet. No public stocks, no proclamation nailed to the gates. That might yet work in our favor. Drosk would not ride out openly; men like him prefer shadows and deniability. But the others… they seemed like a bunch that despises loose ends. They do not shout, they do not hurry — they simply keep coming, long after others have lost interest.

An odd company we are, hunted by forces both lawful and crooked, standing at the edge of the wild with damp boots and too many enemies.
Still, as the forest closed in around us, I found myself thinking that perhaps this strange bunch might yet help me with my own quest… if fate allows our paths to remain entwined a little longer. But first, I had some unfinished business in Neverwinter. The kind that's better done alone.

Thalen Wren “Notes from the Wrong Side of the Law”, DR 1558