Salt and Pepper

Molly Schafer

Carly Strait

Our adventurers, the dedicated employees of Griana's Meats and More, make their way further into the Vertrivian. They meet someone, they work on their socialization skills, and try to complete their quest. One or both of these tasks fail.

## Summary

The meats and more crew are spending time resting at home base after successfully catching five flying snakes for their hunting trip. Phibi and Kai are napping in a well-made hammock, while Griana tends a fire and follows suit. Zil takes this opportunity to try examining Arthur’s toy dog again. It is a black Mastiff-looking hound made of stone, with a smooth polish on it. They set it on the ground and attempt a few commands, but it still does nothing, so they resign themselves to try again later.

Stoking the flames, Griana hears a faint rustling behind her, and turns just as a man emerges from the treeline. He is a tall, human man with salt-and-pepper hair. He asks to share their fire, and introduces himself as Orund Othelm. Zil tries to give him the once-over, (probably rightly) not trusting a random man coming from the woods. They tentatively agree to let him join them, and he takes a rabbit from his bag and begins to skin it. He asks where they’re all from, noting that they clearly aren’t from the Vertrivian Forest. Over the course of the conversation, the sleeping members of the party begin to stir. Kai introduces herself with a firm handshake. Zil asks his favorite color (deep purple), and offers to change the color of his leather armor. He seems pleased.

The conversation continues for a while. Zil asks if he knows anything about the trees, noting their strange color. He insists he doesn’t, although the group feels suspicious of whether he’s telling the truth. Griana is slightly more obvious about her suspicions, trying to encourage him to move on from their campsite whenever the conversation diverts too far. She casts detect magic, sensing the usual power within the party (notably Phibi and Zil), in addition to a dark red aura surrounding the dog toy in Zil’s pocket, and a light green aura around Orund. In the center of his chest, contrasting with the green, sits an amulet beneath his shirt with a dark purple aura. Zil distracts with some magic tricks while Griana relays this information to the rest of the team. Phibi inquires about the necklace and he says he found it in some nearby ruins, which seems like a partial truth. He removes it for them to examine. It has sigils on the front, in the center of which is the carved profile of a raven. Perhaps bombarded by too many questions, he offers directions to the ruins and the grove they’ve been searching for and bids them farewell.

The party sets their sights on finding the grove while there is still daylight, arriving just in time for sunset. Just above one of the rivers surrounding the grove, Zil spies a goblin and its warg keeping watch by a waterfall. Curiosity gets the better of them, and they all decide to investigate what they could be hiding. They attack the guard with a magic missile while still concealed, causing it to blow a horn and alert other goblins. Once the guard is killed, they notice the warg back its way into the waterfall and disappear.

Climbing the waterfall is somewhat difficult for the group to manage; Zil vows to start hitting the gym. They make it up first, and jump through the waterfall, disappearing to their party below just like the warg.

Inside the waterfall, Zil finds a door with a sigil matching the amulet around Orund’s neck. Next to the door, a tunnel has been carved just big enough for goblins and wargs to make their way around it. There is dried blood at the base of the door. They decide to act quickly, fearing the approaching goblins they can hear stirring inside. The rest of the crew makes it up just in time to see Zil cut their hand open with a dagger and put it against the door.