Astrid Aria Mist

After finding a strange item in a well during the last session, I exited the well and landed back on the ground with the rest of my group. I distributed a bit of money I had found down there and then we all began speaking with each other, planning our next course of motion. While we were discussing, Orynth whispered to the gnome he had on his shoulder (See hidden notes for more information). After both he and the gnome acted like they hadn't been talking about anything when Erevan approached the two, he lowered the gnome from his shoulder and announced he was going to get some tea. He went into what we assumed to be his abode and then came back out with a tray of different meats and cheeses, with some tea as well. We all sat down at the stump of a tree, and he placed the tray for all of us to view and choose what we might snack on. With care, he inspected each one of us and gave us a tea that he assumed we would like. He went around to each of us and handed us a cup of tea. Dur and L passed on the tea, suspicious of what could be in it, but the rest of us accepted the cup of tea gratefully. Orynth told us about a house not far from here in which one of his close friends lived; an elven woman who was almost like family to him. The house was about 5 miles to the coast, and while the others argued amongst themselves whether to go to the house, to the coast, or back to Ka'Nir, I pulled Orynth aside, just out of earshot from the group, and asked him about the item I had found in the well (information revealed later in entry). We returned to the group and everyone decided that later on, we would head to the house Orynth had told us about. After saying a few parting words, we went on our way. As we walked along, I decided I should probably tell the group about the sword and the strange history. I retrieved it from my bag and turned to everyone as we walked. When I had found it, it glowed a dim orange-red color, but now it glowed a kind of purple-orange color, as if dormant. I told the group all that Orynth had told me. The sword was forged long ago by fire elementals and was displayed in the well I had found it in as a peace offering between those who forged it the god Uk'Otoa, who is supposedly a great serpent with many eyes that lives in the sea. I told them of the strange voice I heard upon picking up the sword. "Hello, child," I told them it had said, "it's been years since I've felt the warmth of another. I want to strike a deal with you. I can be yours. All you have to do is let me warm up and do some damage to the undead." The sword had paused in its speech, I recalled, before speaking one last time. "One more thing," it said, "What's your name? I'm Nárë." I remembered the knowledge that I had been granted from the sword, and in front of the entire group, I spoke a single word. "Calta." Nárë burst into flames in front of them. I repeat the words that Nárë said to me so the others could hear. Nárë told me of its first owner, Ghash, who apparently didn't treat Nárë very well. He swung Nárë around as if it were only a sword or a prize to be brandished ungratefully. Nárë was known as the fearsome killer of the undead, the bane of those who have risen once again. But in time, the fire elementals were forced to give Nárë up as a peace offering with the god Uk'otoa. For ages, Nárë lay waiting in the well at the village of Ogmit. Even after the desecration and destruction of the shrine itself. After explaining its history, Nárë said it had to show us something. It flew out of my hand and into the air, many feet away from the ground. Still lit on fire, Nárë swung for a few surrounding trees. The cracking of the trunks sounded like thunder and the crashing of each tree to the ground was like an avalanche. After a few introductions (and shaking hands/hilts with Erevan), Nárë floated peacefully back into my hand, and the session came to an end.

The dragon set its sights on the tall figure who had emerged from the old man's cloak, and with a strong swoop of its wings, flew over and landed in front of him. Almost everyone seemed to be frozen with fear. Erevan, Zorin, L, and Dur stood lifelessly, almost as if the shock of being attacked and startled by the dragon had just about killed them. The only signs that they lived were the rapid breaths they took in and the occasional blink of their eyes. Wilfred, Bill, and I all locked eyes. I began to speak an incantation, and the dragon seized up with pain, having been hit with an 'inflict wounds' spell. Wilfred ran up to the dragon and took a swing at it with his mace, doing a bit more damage. The dragon lunged forward at the tall man, determined to make him pay for the attempted spearing. He dodged the jaws of the terrible creature but was still a hair from being bitten. Bill panicked at the sight of the hostile dragon and tried to sneak away from the battle. His chain mail made such loud noises that he startled himself and tripped, falling face-first to the ground. I ran up behind the dragon and barely missed with a swing of my mace. Wilfred, the tall man, and the dragon all seemed to freeze up and seemed the slightest bit slow and sluggish. I paid no mind to it, and took another swing at the dragon with my mace, this time striking its back. The light was emitted from the tall man's hand, and a crackle of energy was released, hitting something behind us all. The dragon roared, obviously startled by the bolt that was supposed to damage it. Backing up a step or two, it took off into the air and landed on a nearby roof. I took my chance and quickly pulled out my crossbow, loading a bolt into it and firing. The bolt wasn't an arrow, it was more like a bullet. It moved at impossible speed. When the dragon realized it was coming, it was already too late. The arrow embedded itself in the dragon's eye like a pin in a pincushion. The dragon froze for a minute, then made a sort of whining sound before its limbs froze up and it fell to the ground, nearly hitting the fearful drow, who was still cowering in the once-alleyway. The tall man stood and donned his cloak. He magically shrunk down to be around 6 feet once again and assumed the form of an elderly man. He retrieved his spear, which shrunk to be a wooden walking stick, just as it had been the first time they lay eyes on him. I slowly walked over to the corpse of the dragon, catching my breath as I went, and leaned down to take a look at it. After a minute of checking it over, I raised my mace and gruesomely began to remove the scales and beheaded it. The other group members, all of them now back to their normal selves, watched in disgust as I nimbly removed every last scale that I could make use of and packed them into my backpack. When I had finished, my hands now covered in dragon guts and blood, I turned to face the old man, now back to his original self. Or, what we saw as his original self. He introduced himself as Orynth and turned out to be a half-giant. He inspected each of us carefully and took an odd liking to Wilfred, the gnome. We all introduced ourselves and asked him a few questions about where we were. He explained that we were in the town that was once a sister-city of Ka'Nir. The Collective, the government that runs Ka'Nir currently, had raided and taken over their city and turned it into just a few run-down buildings. He showed us the well, which had used to be the pride and glory of their city, but it was now ruined and dried up, and nobody had seen their artifacts or any of the like in ages. Our group was quite intrigued by the well and decided to try to go down to see what was in it. I used my 'Mingle With the Wind' feature to cast a levitate-like spell and head down. I used the light of L's hat, which he had set on fire and dropped in it, to look around. [See the hidden notes for more information.] I levitated myself out of the well, and my feet touched the ground once more. The group looked to me to see what I had discovered. {At this point, the clock struck 5pm, and we had to end the session.}

The next morning, we all woke up, and Zorin, Dur, and I explained what had happened that night. After that, we collectively decided to head to the nearby city and see what we could find out. When we got to the gates, there was a guard there waiting. He questioned us about our business in the city and then proceeded to reluctantly let us in. When we entered, the first thing we noticed was that nobody was like us. We were a group of misfits and weirdos. Not one of us was normal. No humans whatsoever in the group. The closest we had to a human was a half-elf, but he still had pointed ears. The entire city was filled with humans. Completely normal people. No elves, no half-elves, not even a halfling. The first thing we did upon entering the city was attempt to find an inn. Dur asked around for a while before being directed towards a building by a child. It was called the Cloak and Clover. We entered, and asked for a few rooms to stay in. L and Dur ended up sharing a room, Bill and Wilfred shared a room, Zorin and I shared a room, and Erevan ended up getting his own room because Dur wanted to steal his lute and cut the strings off. Erevan turned out to be a bard and made a bargain with the barkeeper. The bargain was that if he played in the bar in the evenings, we would all get half off our rooms. He successfully performed with his lute, and we managed to get half off of our rooms. I paid for the room with 5 silver pieces, and then we went our separate ways for the day. I ended up just looking around at places near the inn, and nothing interesting happened. At around noon, Erevan met me back at the inn to give me some information he had gotten from two city guards. He told me that the guards had told him about a small town not too far from the city that was being terrorized by a beast of some sort. [See the hidden notes for more information.] When the rest of the group arrived, Erevan and I told them about the nearby town, and we decided to go and see what was up. Upon arriving in the town, we saw an old man walking towards us. He wore a cloak with the hood up and leaned on a wooden walking stick. All of a sudden, a large shadow covered the ground before us, and something landed on the ground. The old man, wanting nothing to do with whatever it was that just landed, ran to find cover so that he could hide. Everybody in the group turned around to see a beast behind us. Dur ran to an alleyway. L, Wilfred, and Bill took a few steps back. Before us was a copper dragon. It took one look at the three of us who remained nearby it and spoke to us. "You're not from around here, are you?" It had asked us. Coincidentally, all three of us spoke draconic, so we understood it. "We're not," we told it. The conversation we had with the dragon was short. It told us that after the extinction of the rest of its family, its ancestors, it had found its way to this village. Our interactions with the dragon were friendly until the old man stepped out of his hiding spot. He doffed his cloak in one swift motion and grew to be 8 feet tall. His wooden walking stick morphed into a long spear, which he threw. While he did throw it with enough force to kill the dragon in one hit, he lacked aim. The spear went soaring into the wall of the alleyway that Dur hid in, and all but ruined his hiding spot. The dragon was angered by this, so with a terrible roar, it exhaled acid, which burned me, Zorin, and Erevan badly.

After falling asleep one night in whatever inn or camp I had decided to stay at, I had the strangest dream. In the dream, a female voice spoke. She said, "Listen, we don't have much time, but we need your help. Ikthvana needs you". Images flashed before my eyes, it was a view of a city from above (later revealed to by the city of Ka'Nir). Then, the scene changed to a humanoid figure standing atop a castle balcony, overlooking the city we had just seen. After the dream had ended, I woke up in the middle of some woods with 6 other people. One looked like a kind of dragon person, with black scales covering their body, another looked like an orc. One looked like a devil-spawn, and one looked like a halfling or a hobbit of some sort. One of them was a drow, I know this because that's what the man who raised me was, and the last just looked like a normal person, with slightly pointy ears. I panicked. The absolute first thing I did was punch the orc because he was the closest person to me. On the other side of the group, apparently, the drow stole from the devil-spawn, and then the devil spawn stabbed the drow. The normal-looking guy spoke a few words, and all of a sudden the devil-spawn was a whole lot more calm. After a few minutes, the calm wore off of him, but he didn't try to stab the drow again. We all introduced ourselves, and it turned out we had all been in the same situation. We all fell asleep in our respective places, and had the exact same dream, then woke up here in these woods. The dragonborn was named Zorin. The orc, who was actually a half-orc, was named Bill. The devil-spawn, who was actually a tiefling, was named L. The hobbit, who was actually a gnome, was named Wilfred. The drow was named Dur. And the person with pointy ears, who was actually a half-elf, was named Erevan. We looked around and were all startled when figures began emerging from the trees. They looked almost like spirits. No, they were spirits. We watched with curiosity as one retrieved a staff and began to wave it around a spot in the ground. Something moved beneath the soil and out sprung a twig. Not a twig, a tree. An entire tree formed beneath the staff and grew as tall as the ones already in the woods. We ended up speaking to these spirits, which ended up being spirits of the trees (no friggin duhh). They were angry at the nearby city for chopping down the trees that they worked hard to grow. When we were done speaking, the spirits walked into the trees, as if they had never been there at all. Logically, one would not purposefully attempt to further anger a forest full of spirits that could damage you for life, but I paid no attention to those details! I scanned the group and walked up to the one I assumed to be the least smart. The half-orc. The half-elf came to see what I was doing, and once I told him my plan, he happily helped out. We convinced the half-orc to punch the tree the spirit had just walked into. In the half-orcs mind, it was likely a logical thing to do. If those spirits were able to walk right into the tree, then his fist should be able to go right through it, right? Nope! He hit the tree, and it was almost as if he had been shocked because his entire arm was pained by a sickening jolt. As it was getting late, we made camp near a river. We figured out who would watch when and ended up leaving the dragonborn and the drow on the first watch. I fell asleep, only to be woken up shortly thereafter. Zorin told me that she and Dur had heard two voices a few minutes before, and wished to check it out. I watched over the rest of the group, but when they returned, they returned empty-handed. The rest of the night was uneventful.