Eiger planned a small expedition to explore the mysterious livestock thefts from the farmsteads closest to the Rattlin’ Bog. Izeo, Zeke and Serena joined him with Freya the Tracker hired to…well…track, and Hurmore to protect the Elven Lady.

After a short journey along the Blackmire river the group spotted two Lizardmen dragging a sheep carcass into the Rattlin’ Bog. A truly remarkable shot from Serena’s Longbow impaled one of the Lizardmen from across the river, causing them to drop the sheep and run for cover in the Swamp. Not wanting to risk a morning swim through the dark waters, the group backtracked to the bridge and returned to the spot of the attack. Freya determined that the Lizardmen had returned to collect the sheep carcass and had then moved into the swamp. We set out after them.

Only a few minutes into the Bog, Eiger and Freya fell afoul of a large quicksand pit. Freya was close enough to the edge to extricate herself without too much trouble. Eiger on the other hand started to sink. Eiger struggled to keep his head above water for nearly a minute, all the while his companions looked on in shock, none had brought a rope. Finally Freya tossed him a rope but it was too late, he was already submerged. Serena then directed Hurmore to lend a hand, but in the end, Eiger was forced to pull himself out of the swamp. In an uncharacteristic stroke of luck (rolled a 1 on a d100!), Eiger accidentally impaled a skull with his polearm in trying to get out of the quicksand. Inside the skull was a magic ring!

After this Freya lost the trail of the Lizardmen as they had apparently jumped into the water and swam away. With no other options the group continued on into the Bog to see if any new trails would present themselves. None did.

The group did find the sunken fort and Glisten, Serena’s Familiar, scouted the area and reported that humans now inhabit the fort. We decided to bypass the fort until we could learn more about who, or what, inhabits it.

A little further along the bank and the group was utterly surprised by a lurking crocodile (oh how we missed Garavon’s 30+ average perception score then…) that quickly grabbed Freya and took her under the river for a death roll. All involved tried to save her, including an ill-fated grappling attempt by Eiger and Izeo actually wading out into the river to try and save her.

Eiger made a command decision to return to Blackmire as this expedition was clearly doomed to failure in whatever it attempted to do…

Devons Perspective:

Devon organized a party to go pack into the the goblin warrens. We had a well balanced party this time, with 2 clerics and a sorcerer along with our 4 fighters. We made it to the mine with no problems, and made it back into the warrens.

We went back over the bridge, this time we were prepared with extra rope, and everyone made it across safely. Two of the dwarves only made it by crawling though.

We traveled along, and ran into a small party of goblins. I through a javelin at one, but just missed, and they ran down the corridor. We attempted to pursue, but lost their trail, and ended up wondering in a circle. We did discover a small room where there were some holes leading to the surface. Serena had her owl fly over to investigate, and we think there may be some ruins nearby.

We continued traveling, and ran into the goblins in their home cave. Ebban and I slipped forward to take out the to goblin guards. I killed mine, but Ebban missed his, and even with the rest of the parties help, the goblin survived and ran away calling an alarm.

I managed to skewer him with a javelin as he was running away. With that, the battle was on. Two waves of goblins charged us and threw a hail of javelins our way. We fought them off with some help fro Serenas well placed sleep spells.

Then their bugbear leader, name Grack, joined the frey. We worked together as a party and managed to defeat Grack and his followers, with several fleeing before us.

We searched the cavern and collected coins and Grack’s magic buckler and magic halberd. After the looting, we went back home.

Thequis:
Wow, my first foray. I can’t wait. This should be so fun. Heading out, we find the scat of a large boar. Who knew that shit could be so useful. From there we were able to pick up his tracks and follow him deeper into the Cradle Woods.

Though as we were hunting the boar, giant mosquitos decided to hunt us. Boy that really sucked! Haha, I kill me. Well, luckily not. They were actually pretty wimpy, but I felt woozy for hours. One thing to keep in mind when you’re splatting giant mosquitos is it leaves a lot of blood. To follow up, boars are omnivores are drawn to mass amounts of blood.

Crashing through the brush on the heels of the stirge attack, came the boar. I wisely gained the safety in a tree. The boar really made his feelings known of what he thought about the party, putting out massive damage, especially to the druid and his dog. I guess we wounded it pretty severely, because the boar decided to flee. The druids brilliant entangle slows up the boar while the party managed to hit him with some parting shots and killing it. I know I should feel sorry for killing of nature’s animal. But sometimes, such monsters beasts must be culled to allow others to survive.

Dragging the huge carcass back with us, we were definitely the toast of the town. Hopefully my new companions can get what they needed for their assault. I wish them the best of luck, but sounds like a suicide to me.

We set off at a good pace into Craddle Wood to see if we could find Orc tracks. As luck would have it we ran into the same group of Lumberjacks as last time. After some negotiation we got information that some Orc tracks were located to the west.

We followed the Orc tracks into Cobalt Spur and encountered a warband of several Orcs with hunting dogs. Garavon cast an Entangle that turned the melee chaotic but we prevailed.

We followed the trail of those Orcs to a small mountain in the Cobalt Spur with a winding road of Dwarven make leading up it. We ascended, finding bits of debris and rubbish into a cleft in the mountain side.

As we rounded a bend we ran into two Orcs who sounded the alarm in Orcish, which Darem understood and relayed to us, doing us much good…

The road turned into a cave in the side of the mountain that had one metric shit ton of arrow slits in it through which the Orcs rained arrows down on Eiger and Eiger alone. The withering arrows were too much to stand and we had to retreat to fight another day.

Devon’s perspective:

The day started out bright and cheerful as Orshar led our group out to the Notch Fells. We traveled through the morning until we arrived at the Fells. This section of the forest was quite odd, there are trunks lying around that were clearly felled by lumberjacks of some kind, but no one has been here for at least a generation. It almost looks like this whole section of woods is stuck in time.

Orshar led us into the Fells, and Garavon noticed something white under a tree. As he stooped over to take a look, spiders dropped out of the trees upon us. I was completely taken by surprise by this attack. Before I could defend myself, I was bitten several times, and at least one of the spiders must have poisoned me, because I felt quite ill afterwards.

We quickly dispatched these spiders, and Garavon searched under the tree and found the bones of a long dead human, along with a rusty sickle and 20 gp. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn these spiders planned to use the distraction of the bones to ambush us.

We continued through the Fells, and just as we were approaching the other side, 3 larger spiders dropped out of the trees and attacked us. Again, we quickly defeated this foe, with only slight damage to us. At this point I suggested we move out of the Fells to regroup, but the rest of the party wanted to head in further, so we went deeper into the forest.

As we got close to the center of the Fells, we began to notice that large spiders were all around us, and normal size spiders were coalescing into swarms. My dwarven barbarian friends decided it would be a good idea to through javelins at the spiders, and they attacked.

We quickly realized we were way over our heads and started to retreat. This went better for those of us in the back of the party than those in front. Izeo, Garvon, Darem and myself were easily able to outrun the spiders, but Orshar was swarmed by the swarms and Zorn was webbed by a spider. Garavon called upon his mystical powers and the plants and trees came alive to entangle the spiders, but unfortunately Orshar and Zorn were also caught up in it.

Darem must have noticed that his sister was in trouble because he turned around and ran back at the spiders to save her. Orshar managed to overcome her sickness and got away from the spiders, and Darem fled with her.

Zorn finally managed to slip free of his webbing and began his retreat, but just not in time. Just as he broke free, the other spiders caught up to him and brought him down. Zorn was cut down by the nature he tried to protect. Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think?

As we were fleeing and I looked back to see Zorn go down, I swear I saw a very large tree, larger than the rest, that had an opening that led into the roots, very much like a cave.

On our way back out of the Fells, we ran right into a very large, very angry bear. Then the most amazing thing happened. Garavon stepped forward, and talked the bear into NOT attacking us. After that we were able to make our way safely to town.

A group of hardy adventurers again headed to the Tin Mine, not so much out of a desire to recover the bodies of their fallen brethren, but out of a sense that the goblins are winning. A serious bunch, led by a surly dwarf named Ebben Goblinslayer of the Goblinslayer clan, well rounded with capable warriors Devon and Darem, battle sorceress Serena, and a quick footed halfing cleric named Bila, set out again. Amazingly, they were able to get down the various mine shafts without injury, a rare occurrence thus far in the Blackmire Marches.

After traveling quite some distance through the natural caverns, we came upon some goblins riding wargs. A stirring battle ensued in which goblins and wargs were slaughtered!

With the dwarves and Devon slaughtering wargs and goblins and the women firing arrows and healing, we made quick work of them. We followed bloody tracks to a narrow rope bridge over a rushing river. Of course, Ebban fell into the raging water and nearly drowned. He lost his father’s Dwarven Waraxe and Devon’s shield and was barely able to keep his head above water. Luckily, Bila tossed him a rope before he drowned and he was able to climb up the slick cliff wall. Thoroughly humiliated and without weapons, Ebban convinced the group to head back to Blackmire.

Devon, Silvio, Serena, Gravon, and Zorn set out to head back to the Tin Mine and retrieve the bodies of their lost comrades who fell to the goblins several weeks ago. Darem arrived late and nearly missed the excursion. Everything started off on a bad leg when nobody had a horse or cart. It became worse when it was revealed that Serena’s man-at-arms (Hurmore) came on the trip without armor or weapons.

The shit really hit the fan when too many party members climbed onto the bucket and the chain broke. Everybody except for Silvio and Hurmore crashed to the bottom of the shaft. Serena cracked her head on the side of the cart and was dying until Garavon healed her.

A few goblins fired some javelins at the party and there were some brief ineffectual skirmishes. This could only be described as an EPIC FAILURE.

We finally headed down to the large cavern where we engaged the enemy. Darem bravely entered every fray first, while Serena used to Sleep spells to great effect. Devon went down, but then Darem, the dogs, and an incredible two-handed blow from Silvio dropped the goblin sergeant. Devon was stabilized by Garavon and then we set about slaughtering the sleeping goblins.

Next, an amazing site greeted us, as a crazed looking goblin came charging at us atop a evil warg! Silvio was taken down by the warg and rider and knew no more …

Eiger, Drogosh, Zorn and Garavon set out to explore the Cradle Wood. With absolutely no direction from the multitude of Druids that somehow live in the bastion of civilization that is Blackmire, Eiger chose to head West as he is that kind of decisive leader.

We detected several humanoids moving through the underbrush, Zorn quickly threw a spear and nearly killed a peaceful logger. Luckily, this logger knew the way to the Lost Temple and parted with that information for a small fee.

A few kilometers later the intrepid explorers ran into an Orc raiding party. The Orcs somehow managed to surround Zorn’s pet dog and knock him into unconsciousness. People were scattered willy-nilly and both Drogosh and Zorn also got knocked out. Drogosh succumbed to his injuries before anyone could get to him. Also Zorn’s dog was slain.

We packed up the bodies and headed back to town.

We decided to go back out after resting. Zorn prayed for a whole day in the woods and another dog that looked remarkably similar to his old dog showed up. The barding fit it perfectly too, which was strange.

We eventually found our way to the Lost Temple. All of the trees around it were dead and blighted according to Garavon it was magical. The temple, which originally was to an Ancient Hellic Diety, had been defaced by some dark religion’s practicioners.

A deadly Viper made a cowardly sneak attack on Eiger and tried to poison him. At first he felt fine, then he didn’t…

Downstairs in the Temple basement there was a door with strange Evil writing on it. Eiger bashed it in good. Several Zombies were behind the door and came out swinging right into a Eiger and Devon meat grinder. Zombies grind up good, ja!

There was a second door that needed bashing and Eiger was up to the challenge! In that room was a Sarcophagus with more profane writing. As some of the party entered, they were overcome with great fear and loathing. Just as that happened, 3 Ghouls dropped from the ceiling and attacked!
The two forces engaged in a Deadly and Delicate Dance of Death!! Eventually the party won out with suprisingly little damage or paralysis.

The only items of value were found in the Sarcophagus. There was a pouch containing 50 Platinum Pieces, a small vial and a scroll of Comprehend Languages.

The party assembled at the gates of Blackmire and headed out to the Cradle Wood along the same path as before. We found the Bandit camp easily and discovered two sets of humanoid tracks leading out, one to the Northeast and one to the Southeast. We elected to follow the tracks to the Southeast.

The trail led through the wood for several hours when we came across a dead body in a rive run. It was an Ambush!. Several bandits burst forth from spider holes and attacked us. After engaging the enemy, Drogosh was felled by the infamous Black Dougal who sneak attacked from a tree branch. Eiger tripped Black Dougal and called for help, which was ignored by everyone except Orshar, who came to Drogosh and Eiger’s aid.

While Black Dougal was flat on his back, Drogosh was able to move away and cast a cure spell on himself. Black Dougal was able to get up amidst a flurry of blows about his head. In a dastardly move he went after the wounded Drogosh and sent him unconscious, shortly after he was put on his back again and subsequently killed.

The bodies were stripped and one Bandit was taken prisoner. Drogosh put the Bandit to the question to see what he knows about the local area. He knew pretty much what we knew.

We decided to follow the stream north in the hopes that it would lead to the Lost Temple. Being tired we had to stop and rest for the night. Garavon was out foraging and was ambushed by a Black Bear which nearly killed his dog. We decided to head back to town to sell our loot and dispose of the prisoner.

Orshar & Darem, dwarven barbarians, have organized a group to go explore the Cradle Wood. Garavon, Zorn, Serena, and Silvio accompanied them.

Leaving shortly before dusk, the party was ambushed by a group of bandits. Garavon & Silvio detected the ambush and were able to kill two bandits quickly. The rest promptly fled. Garavon and his trusty wolf companion (Rynor) found the bandits trail.

Following the trail lead to the bandit’s encampment which was first discovered by Serena’s familiar. Silvio sneaked up to the camp and observed the tracked bandits arguing with the apparent leader.

A huge battle ensued, which resulted in ZERO party deaths. Some of the bandits, including the leader and a sneaky fellow, were able to escape.

The party obtained a nice helping of loot including a potion of expeditious retreat.