Session 0034: Home again, home again, jiggity jig

The Heretic had taken one of the Human attackers hostage from their last encounter. Bound and gagged, the prisoner was dragged back to camp for questioning. Meanwhile, Dorian and Lev decided to pursue the hobgoblin who had fled into the dense forest canopy. They quickly found a trail leading south and followed it for about ten minutes. But unwilling to stray too far from the rest of the group, and realizing the hobgoblin was too far ahead, they abandoned the pursuit and returned.   Back at camp, the party turned their attention to the prisoner. Cathlynn led the interrogation, but the man was uncooperative at first—sneering and smug. He seemed to enjoy taunting her. That changed when Dorian silently crafted a noose and let the implication hang heavy in the air. The threat struck home.   The prisoner finally spoke. He claimed there wasn’t much to tell. His captain, a man known only by the nickname “Grin,” had been hired in Lankhmar to follow the party and obtain some item that one of them carried. The prisoner didn’t know what the item was—only Grin did. Desperate, he begged for release, swearing he had no loyalty to Grin and only wanted to start a new life elsewhere. For fifty gold, he offered to hunt Grin down himself. Lilly scoffed at the price and asked how much money he actually had in his pockets. The prisoner leered and said, “Why don’t you reach into my pocket and find out,” with a crude grin suggesting something far more vulgar.   Without a word, Dorian stepped forward and slit the man’s throat.   Knowing they had made enemies and that Grin or the hobgoblin could return with reinforcements, the party broke camp. As they packed, the wind picked up with unnatural force—gusting to 35 miles per hour. Temperatures plummeted to -7°F. It was barely 2 a.m., but the foreboding weather pushed them onward, guiding their donkeys, Gus and Meadow, southward along The Starfall Trade Route.   Around 5:30 a.m., they spotted something unusual—Dorian noticed a circling murder of Starcrows above the treeline to the east. Curious despite her fatigue, Lilly climbed down from the covered wagon and left a small offering of barley and root vegetables before backing away. One large Starcrow descended, regarded Lilly with piercing eyes, then turned and flew due east, the others following.   Sensing something important, Dorian ventured into the woods alone. A few hundred yards in, he found a small glade. In its center stood a moss-covered stone altar, flanked on all sides by trees in symmetrical positions—north, south, east, and west. Kneeling in the clearing was a Halfling woman, weeping over a stillborn child. The infant’s body was twisted and wrong—black lizard-like scales ran across its limbs, and its tiny hands ended in curled talons.   Dorian gently approached, and the woman—Mirla Junebriar of Oakhaven—lifted her tear-stained face and asked if he was the druid she had been waiting for. When he said no, she sobbed harder. “I didn’t know… I’m so sorry. I’m sorry…” she whispered, burying her face in her child again. Dorian returned to gather the others.   Cathlynn approached with a heavy heart. The sight of the malformed child awakened memories of grief and loss from her own past. Lilly recognized Mirla as an acquaintance from Oakhaven. Mirla asked where Lilly had been and if she’d returned home yet. Lilly explained they were headed there now. Mirla warned them that Oakhaven was not the same. Her child was the seventh to be born with such deformities.   They helped her bury the child. Lilly used her druidic magic to cast Mold Earth, shaping a gentle grave. Brewyn played a soft, haunting melody on her drum—Feather and Flame—as Cathlynn conjured a patch of Baby’s Tears to grow over the grave. Lev said a quiet prayer. They invited Mirla to return to Oakhaven with them, and she accepted.   The town, as Mirla warned, was not the same. Oakhaven felt hollow, weighed down by grief. Its usual bustling streets were quiet. People stared past Lilly, not at her—despite her prominence as the proprietor of The Merry Mug, the town’s most beloved tavern. Their eyes seemed distant, haunted.   At The Merry Mug, Brewyn asked for nothing more than a bath, a meal, and a warm bed. The others stayed behind to check in with Lilly’s staff. Farah, her ever-loyal barmaid, was ecstatic to see her. She caught Lilly up on the inn’s affairs and the tragic birth defects spreading through town.   Farah gave a rundown of the current patrons:   A hooded drow woman sitting alone in the corner, who tipped 50 gold for privacy.   A quiet priest from Kleg Nar, dressed in white robes and slowly nibbling cheese and fruit.   A Human woman who had been drunk for over a day, muttering to herself at the bar.   A trio of Halfling musicians tuning their instruments by the hearth.   Then Cathlynn noticed her—Ikiri Kcarm, their old companion. They greeted her warmly and sat to catch up. Ikiri told them she and Ironcast had parted ways weeks earlier in Mythan Belanore after he confessed his love and asked for her hand in a handfast. She declined, gently. That night, he quietly packed his things and left without saying goodbye.   Ikiri returned to her hometown of Kokgnab, where local guards asked her to examine something strange. She was brought to a grieving woman who held a dead, deformed infant—scales, talons, just like Mirla’s child. Recognizing its unnatural nature, Ikiri agreed to deliver the body to the clerics of Mythan Belanore for study. She had since come to Oakhaven hoping to find Lilly, and now offered to accompany them when they journeyed south again.   The party agreed to stay in Oakhaven for about a week to rest and recover. During that time, they brought several items looted from a necromancer in the Veldt to local appraiser Tibbin Reedwhistle. Most items were sold off locally, but a dagger and notebook—believed to be of more value—were entrusted to Tibbin to take to auction in Lankhmar. He would return in a few months with the proceeds, minus his 10% cut.   Before they left the glade where Mirla had buried her child, Cathlynn had cast Speak with Animals on the lead Starcrow. It spoke a message both cryptic and terrifying:   “The White Witch is about to split the world. She is pregnant. Her child must not be born. When next the sky cracks with black lightning, return to the Temple…”   The words echoed in their minds like a prophecy, dark and undeniable.