Tarok, First-Week, Fourth-day, the Now-Year
Cynjak, Un-Krug and Yukkbutt converge upon the Court-of-Crows, heading first to the local watering hole Pilaf's Tavern to sate the hunger of the half-orcs. They find themselves unable to make a trade for a meal, despite the paladin's best attempts to use her musical abilities to woo the small morning crowd. K'gug, Karl and Nobro each arrive independently of the rest, and most set upon the same task. Kaarl arrives their first, and makes judicious use of his goodberries spell to sate both the half-orc strangers and the tavern keeper Pilaf. K'gug seems a bit dismayed by how people keep addressing him as vertically challenged, since he is clearly the same height as the local humans, if not taller. Nobro wastes little time seeking out his contact 'Fingers', by heading over to the local Swap Meet. There he encounters Maun, and invites him to the local tavern. The brute follows, and then proceeds to proposition Cynjak in the one way he knows how. Eventually the halfling figures out Maun is his 'in' with Nimmi 'Fingers', and the warrior heads off to find his associate. Cynjak decides to visit the Swap Meet, where he encounters both Gundo Shattermouth and a strange peddler selling hacked up groundhogs, who tells her a rumor that the 'Demon in the Ditch' has been sighted north of the village.
After Maun and Gundo wheel Nimmi 'Fingers' to Pilaf's Tavern, the charming old man asks Nobro to perform a job and prove he has the best interests of the Ten-Tribes in mind. Access to the loonroot, a medicinal mushroom has been lost, and with it the potential to heal a great number of the ailing among the local villages. He asks that the halfling round up some assistance and head to Dogrush Mire, a small wetland area near a split in the Whipwater. Nobro quickly networks the job to the half-orcs. Nobro goes off to visit the butcher Goblo, who is probably related to him, and is told that rare beast cuts are always welcome and rewarded at the slaughterhouse. The others go to speak with Ull, a drunken local sage who enlightens them on both the possible dangers of the loonroot long term, and that the 'Demon of the Ditch' is actually an ankheg, a burrowing horror not uncommon on the Plain. The group decides to reassemble the following morning and assist Nobro with his task. En route back to their various tents and Pilaf's Tavern, they meet up with a congenial fellow named Ode, a local storyteller and minstrel. He is quite taken with Cynjak, and unlike the other pigs that have attempted to shack her, she is also taken by his politeness, and decides to spend the evening with him.
Tarok, First-Week, Fifth-day, the Now-Year
Awakening, breakfast and then five of the PCs decide to travel early, collecting Cynjak en route to the western gatehouse of the Court-of-Crows. She happens to be bathing in the Whipwater, and emerges to the catcalls of local fisherman and several of her own party. The rest of the day is spent uneventfully crossing the Whipwater Plain to the fork in the river that is their destination. When evening falls, they decide to set up camp and watch and tackle the river and the Mire the next morning.
Tarok, First-Week, Sixth-day, the Now-Year
The PCs explore the surface of Dogrush Mire, but there is little of note until they find a rotted, large tree stump with a pit in the middle leading down a chute to the darkness. They find a weed and fungus-choked network of caverns below, which they begin to explore. Not long after, they are surprised and set upon by a number of small myconids, which do not prove much of a match for the party, delivering a few wounds but being annihilated in return. The PCs press on, finding other oddities like a chamber of corpses being used as gardening planters by the local fungus, and a half-submerged dinosaur skeleton sticking out of a ceiling of one of the caves. Several of them are then crushed when attempting to pass through a damp corridor propped up with rotted timbers, an old mine of some sort...since four of them are pretty heavily wounded by the event, they decide upon a short rest before continuing.
PCs: Cynjak, K'gug, Kaarl, Nobro, Un-Krug, Yukkbutt
XP rewarded: 150 per player.
Inspiration rewarded: K'gug, Kaarl, Un-Krug
New NPCs
Goblo (halfling
male): A
robust Halfling male with thick muttonchops, and a thicker midsection draped in
an apron of stitched coyote hides, he bears many scars from his own mishaps in
rendering the meat of the great beasts of the Plateau. He smokes from a
fat-bottomed pipe which reeks of dung and clover, and wears various ornaments
of bones he laced together with vine, in addition to a serrated bone butcher
knife the size of most swords.
Gundo
Shattermouth (human male): So-named for the rumor that a velociraptor bit
most of his face off, Gundo possesses a frightening visage, lipless and flesh
peeled below his nose and almost to his ears. His scalp is bald on top but
otherwise hangs tawny brown to his waistline in the back, which is quite a ways
considering his 6’6” height. Gundo is swathed in dense rhinoceros leather
studded with small stones, and wields a nasty two-handed club on which he
carves the faces of his greatest enemies.
Maun the Bastard
(human male):
As wide as his partner Gundo is tall, Maun is the equivalent of a dense stone
wall made flesh. Block-headed and fully bald, he bears the tattoo of a
woman’s loins on his skull and wears a leather muzzle with bone teeth that can
replace those he is missing. A pair of stone axes hang at his waist, but his
primary weapon is a longbow from which he fires thorny, often poisoned arrows.
Maun communicates only with grunts and harumphs, and his eyes tend to drift in
opposite directions, one of them cloudy with cataracts.
Nimmi ‘Fingers’
(human male):
Cruelly named for the fact that one of his hands is missing three of its
digits, Nimmi is a charismatic oldster whose legs no longer function, thus is
wheeled around on a primitive cart with stone wheels by his muscular attendants
Gundo & Maun. His whiting hair is neatly kept in dyed bone braids, and his
chinstrap beard perfectly symmetrical. He is struck by albinism, so his eyes
are a pinkish-red hue. Nimmi is also one of the only men in the Court who still
has all his teeth. He wields an obsidian, ruby-tipped cane in his left hand, a
rare relic he bartered from an explorer of the City of the Carvers who stumbled
across it.
Ode (human male): A solemn but
smiling man of many summers, his gray hair is fashioned into a hundred knots
which give off the appearance of spines, his moustache so wide that it is
wrapped around the back of his head and knotted with grease. He is never found
without a crude string instrument, pipes suspended from his neck and at least a
pair of wood & hide drums slung on his back, but he also has a stone pick
on his belt.
Pilaf (human
male):
A gaunt, humble man with but a few surviving strands of black and gray hair
hanging from the top of his skull. He wears well-kept woolen garments and is
known for his skilled threadwork in addition to mixing delicious concoctions
from the fermented fruits and vegetables he stores behind his tent-tavern.
Pilaf squints a lot, sensitive to sunlight, but counters when he goes outside
with a shady, wide-brimmed hat of woven wheat stalks and dinosaur scales.
Ull (human male): A plump old
man who reeks of grapes and berries, which often stain his fingers and thick
graying moustache. His hair is so long as to be out of control, falling in
curled cascades nearly to the floor, and he does not ever seem to bathe in the
Whipwater, claiming an innate fear of water. Ull is also known to have a rather
significant flatulence problem which he has no intention of fixing through diet
or exercise.
Vancal the Wage
(human male):
A hunched, middle aged man with a shaven head and massive, flowing gray beard
which is adorned with stone arrow-heads. He has a severe underbite and
staggered gait, plus countless other aches and pains from his many campaigns
with the Spent Men against rowdy orcs, goblins and predators. He still wears
his hide armor with pride, though he is rarely sent out to the field, now more
of a recruiter who does much of Captain Taias’ work for him. Vancal still leans
upon a mighty stone mace which has broken many a skull in those days when it
has been swung, and he talks with a slurred, boring speech that often drives
prospects mad.
