Lost and Found 5e WNW

Session 13 of the weird new world campaign was played on Friday 5/14

The party consisted of the following:
Veidt, 1/2 Elf Wizard 4 [John (Absent, but kindly substituted by Erindale)]
Nessendra, Wood Elf Cleric 4 (Erindale)
Kethra, Human Fighter 4 (Nikki)
Bach, Dragonborn Warlock 4 (Erik)
Riia, Human Ranger 4 (Hanna)
Guy Noir, ½ Elf Rogue 4 (Nadia)
Anya Bowen, Tiefling Ranger 4 (Allison)

The party stretches after their battle and checks the sun. It's getting to be sunset soon. Not wanting to camp in the middle of rotting, smelly troglodytes, however, they continue north on the boardwalk as far as they can before making camp for the night. They go about their shifts per usual. All is well except for a faint troglo scent in the breeze now and then. Anya and Guy are strolling around trying to stay awake on third shift. Anya takes a step, the boardwalk runes beneath her light a fierce white, spreading out 20 ft in all directions, and *CRACK*! Lightning strikes at Anya's feet, sending her flying 100 ft off the boardwalk! She crashes through the trees and brush of the marsh and lands with a squishing splat in the muck. Everyone is awakened and come scrambling out of their tents. Guy is yelling out, asking if Anya is ok. .......

Anya is half stunned. Lying in the muck, she mentally checks if anything's broken. Miraculously, she appears to be alright. She gets herself up and sees the others far off; Veidt having magiced the fire ablaze again. She feels heavy, sore, and worn out, but she calls out that she's alright... then screams like bloody murder! It wasn't her fall that had made her feel so heavy; it was an enormous, slimy leech! Precisely after she'd called out to her companions, it had bored it's circular toothy mouth through her armor and into the flesh of her back!

Over on the boardwalk, her companions hear the screaming hasn't stopped. They have to save her! Guy, overwhelmed with enthusiasm, leaps off the boardwalk without a thought. ...and lands face first in the mud. Bach follows, landing steadily on his feet. Looking out, he realizes that he can't see anything. His darkvision is gone! He hadn't noticed that his darkvision glasses had gotten broken in the last fight. More surprisingly, none of them had even realized he'd been wearing them! *Sigh* No more darkvision for Bach. But back to the blood curdling screams!

Guy has gotten up and begins dashing towards the sound. Kethra, wisely using her rope, comes down and starts off that way too. Meanwhile, Anya is trying her best to stab at the leech sucking her dry. She manages to stick it once, but then her screams die off. The leech has taken too much blood, and she flops forward in the mud; incapacitated. Without her screams to follow, there's no way to find her, so Veidt thinks quick and sends out his floating lights. Guy get there first and stabs at the leech, then Kethra gets there and swats at it with her bone club; careful not to hit Anya. Veidt sees that it’s still not dead, so he shoots out his magic missiles, knowing they’re self aiming. *BAM*! The leech sizzles, rolls off Anya, and curls up as it finally dies! Nessendra throws out a healing spell and revives Anya well enough for her to walk back on her own.

As they make it back to the boardwalk, they see Riia looking at them with disdain. She had come all the way down off the boardwalk and gotten in the mud and muck, and everyone was just fine! She then turned, grabbed her rope, and clambered back up to camp to clean up. Anya looked up hesitantly. She definitely didn’t want to go through that whole ordeal again. Some of the others remembered seeing the runes lighting up around her, and they all deduced that some of these runes must be meant to keep demons off the walk, only many of them must not be working anymore. Just to be safe, Anya decides to walk under the boardwalk for the remainder of their journey. Bach and Kethra remain with her, while the others move along on top.

They head north for a while before the walk takes a hard turn to the east. East? They needed to be going Northwest. They had been traveling quite a ways already though, with no sign of their quarry… Guy slaps a hand to his forehead. He’d just remembered that he can make a familiar! He tells the others. Yes, he could call on a familiar in the shape of a bird, have it fly up over the tree tops, look through it’s eyes, and see everything around them! Maybe he could spot where they have to go from here. So they wait an hour for him to do his arcane trickster magic and, low and behold, a distinguished black crow appears in front of him.

Guy talks to it and lets it know what he want it to do. The familiar introduces himself as Le Mot, and doesn't seem too keen on having Guy look through his eyes while he's flying around. Since the others can't understand what the familiar is saying, Guy lets them know what's up. "This familiar is not too friendly... and he says to call him Lemo or something.”. The others eye the bird. Riia has a good suggestion: to give it something shiny. Crows like shiny things. Guy turns back to Le Mot and asks if he likes shiny things. Eyeing Guy’s hands in expectation, Le Mot answers, "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. Especially bracelets…”. Guy grins, “What a coincidence. I like shiny things too! We have so much in common.. Up you get!” Guy throws his hand up and tosses the bird flailing into the sky. Le Mot rights himself, glares back at Guy, and flies up 100 feet extremely disgruntled. Riia can only shake her head in a mixture of disgust and bafflement.

Guy describes to the others what he sees through Le Mot’s eyes. The boardwalk continues to the east before disappearing behind the trees. But there's a mountain crater w/ bird cages made of bone big enough to hold humans over to the west, and south of that, a village of huts that the breeze from there smells like traglotites. Anya suggests that the cages sound like a good place for imprisonments. Maybe Anura is being held there? After a thank you gold piece, and a few scratches to just the right spot on his head, Le Mot is in a much better mood. “There. He’s happy. Although, now he just keeps singing that he is Lemo over and over again.” “I I I I I I~ I am Le Mot~”. “Yes, yes.. you are Lemo… Now, who’s a pretty birdie~”. As Guy goes on baby-talking, the others try their best to block him out.

“So!” Kethra yells to cut through. “Are we going to head off to that mountain crater or what?” Without hesitation, Guy leaps off the board walk again, this time landing beautifully; Le Mot fluttering to his shoulder afterwards. Nessandra, Veidt, and Riia come down on ropes and meet up with everyone. As they walk towards the mountain crater, Bach feels something watching him. He looks around and sees a scantily clad dryad peeking out behind a tree. Kethra sees it too and yells to the others. Needless to say, Riia goes nuts! They hold her back while she wisps and buzzes accusations and threats in its native tongue. "I know the language of my enemy!". Kethra decides that just picking her up would be easiest, though Riia's arms and legs continue flailing, wanting only to kill!

The dryad speaks in Elvish so more of them can understand her. She of course asks what's wrong with the flailing one, which the others reply, "Oh, don't mind her...". She says she'd gladly turn her to mulch if they wanted, but no, no, no, that wasn't necessary. They change the subject and ask about the mountain crater, which turns out to be where the troglodytes imprison other creatures. So they ask if she has seen a statue man by the name of Anura around there. No, there's only a very large statue of a very large creature back to the south. They make sure to ask if that is the only statue around, which it is... So they ask for directions, after getting which, they turn to go back to the boardwalk to retrace their way. Riia is still struggling to get free to bring rightful death to the savage plant creature, but they all keep her held and carry her away.

Well, everyone except Guy... He's too busy oogling the dryad and suggesting a hook up to notice anything else, of course. The others wonder if they should tell him that dryads kill and use their mates as mulch after copulation. Sighing, they grab his shirt collar and drag him off too.

They make their way back to the boardwalk. Bach seemed a bit disconnected though. He was constantly looking down at his hands and playing with some imaginary device he called a “Sellfown”. The others eye him strangely, but otherwise ignore it. They moved south, went westward at the split, then west again at the next. At the third split, Le Mot flew up and looked for anything interesting in each direction. There are ruins to their north, so the ones on top of the walk get down and join the others to venture that way.

They get to the ruins close to dusk, but it's still light enough to see a large monster statue near the center. It's eyes are glowing a LED blue. Since it's nearly dark, they decide to go back to the boardwalk for camp. Guy tries to dash up to get a closer look at the statue, but Anya throws a lasso to stop him. Even though her aim is horrible and would have missed completely, Guy sees it and dives right into it! Feigning distress, he calls out, "Oh no~ I'm captured~ What ever will u /do/ to me~?". The others manage to hold down their bile and leave. Kethra drags Guy back with them by the rope, him thinking it's foreplay until she leaves him dangling off the walk during their evening meal. Pffting, he climbs up to join them.

The next morning, they trek the mile it takes to get back to the statue. Up close, they see a large stylized statue of a monstrous creature sitting erect. It has 8 limbs: 2 large rear legs and 6 arms. A stubby tail wraps around to the left side. It's torso is squat, and it's head is hemispherical with a broad lipless mouth, no nose, 4 bulging eyes, and a crest running down it's back. It's eyes are still glowing as they feel some presence going into their minds. They then hear it speak to them in their heads; a multitude of languages echoing. They have found Anura.

Anya moves back a he sifts through their minds, repelled by his nature. He is a celestial, locked in stone by Chaos. He knows they have been sent my the Alabaster Lady; his mate. They ask how they can possibly free him from his stoic state. An image forms in their minds of a floating island seemingly made entirely of bodies; the isle of the dead. In this island, there is a dungeon, in which there is a room dark as pitch. It is in this place they can find what can free him.

They discuss how they can get there, and Bach mentions that Blightfang, his bff, could fly them up there. Anura furies, and a memory of him fighting Blightfang floods their minds! Blightfang is older than when they saw her last. She and Anura fight intensely, flying through the air, but Anura is eventually beaten down and defeated. A feeling of hatred flows out of him, and everyone says very quickly how wrong they were about Blightfang and how terrible she is! But they wondered where she was nowadays anyhow. She now resides on the Shudder Mountains off to the Northeast, beyond the Black Mire.

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My my. Things are getting complicated for our adventurers! How can they save Anura when they don't even know where this isle of the dead is? Can they somehow recruit Blightfang to their cause? Bach and her /are/ totally bff's after all~
We'll see what they do next time on WNW!