The Screaming Forest: Murdock's Account

After sleeping the whole night on some rocks, Murdock wakes up after someone shoots their gun nearby, he jumps up and realizes that he's late for his adventure and runs off to meet with the group.

*After we landed some people saw an old man digging some graves and talking about the screaming woods to the north west. His name was Filas and he supposedly is one of the first people to touch down on this island, I don't really know the guy, but i knew we couldn't really trust him since he looked a bit psychotic from some trauma. My group asked him why he was digging those graves and it seems that they were being dug for his friends or companions. After hearing that we asked him to tell us about his experience in the screaming woods so that we might help him. He spoke about some strange things that came in the night, with human body parts stuck in them and strange goo with leaves holding it together. Though he was visibly shaken and disturbed he still wanted to go back not sure why, but we just wanted to find out what happened to his friends.*

*After traveling for some time the trees around us seemed to look different from what i have seen, they were colored like marble and one of our guys cut in to it and said that he felt a heart beat. Supposedly magical in nature \*duh\*, but no one in our party knew what type of magic they were. We didn't know what to do so kept going towards Filas old camp and the further we went the more marble trees we saw. After some time we finally arrived at Filas camp.*

*Once we arrived, we immediately saw drag marks on the grounds and some old things laying around the tent that Filas said belonged to his friends. One of us looked up and saw a guy hanging in the trees and after seeing that Filas became quite scared, Hands shaking scared, i told the group to tie him down just in case, but they ignored me and Bartholomew tried to calm Filas down with words, since that didn't work Filas started to run away, but luckily Phalanx was up in the trees trying to get the body down and saw Filas running so he jumped down and caught Filas before he escaped. After that i told the group to tie him down, but they just spat excuses that Filas was just scared, more of a reason to tie him down if you ask me. But we wouldn't have been able to tie him down since a group of monsters that Filas described before appeared in front of us with them was a bush with some kind of tendrils, i looked around and it seemed that there were 6 monstrosities and 1 bush coming at us. First thing that happened was Roy's skill showing on one of the monstrosities that crumbled with a couple of hits. Since these monstrosities let's call them Wights seemed to be flammable since they were made of wood, human parts and strange goo. After beating some of the wights another bush came from the side, but was made quick work of by Roy, i myself held off a Wight and a bush all by myself, the slippery bush managed to grab me and pierce my skin with his spikes that were on his tendrils, Golin wanted to show off so he came to me and healed what minor wounds the bush inflicted on me, but once we killed the bushes all the wights seemed to stop moving it's as if the bushes are controlling them.*

*No need to say that after the fight we found Filas hiding in the tent. For some reason that scaredy pants wanted to move on, but he seemed to be hiding something. One of our guys asked him what he was hiding from us, but since i didn't really care i just went and sat down next to the fire place. Since it was getting dark we decided to set up 2 man watch teams in case more monsters would show up, me and i think Olga were on first watch, during the night we could hear strange sounds around us, they would come and go but never too close i could only describe them as a mix between wolf sounds, human screams and human laughter mixed together. Bartholomew started playing with the goo from the monsters and found out that it is quite flammable, also the all of the goo seemed to be going in one direction.*

*Once we woke up everybody wanted to go follow the goo, but the lousy dwarf Golin wanted to have breakfast, oh and the scared guy Filas had escaped during the night, no one listens to the dwarf. Since we wanted to fin Dilas we skipped breakfast and went after his trail that he left. While following his footsteps we found his dirty stinking clothes on the ground with a note in them, some of us tried to figure out what happened to him, but i just readied my shield just in case someone abducted him an was still around and surprise surprise we were surrounded by two giant snakes from the north and south, they were huge the heads of those thing were easily the size of a dwarf. I knew if we split up and attacked the snakes separately we would probably lose so i jumped in front of one of the snakes and shouted to my group to kill the other snake while i'll hold this one off and i did a solid job of if smacking it with my hammer as hard as i could, i could hear the impact of my hammer on its skin, i managed to hold it for some time, but then at the last second i lost my footing and the snakes tail knocked me unconscious, luckily Golin managed to run up to me and get me back up after he made his remarks about saving me twice none the less, once the team killed the other snake, they came over and finished off the snake that i had softened up for them. After we killed the snakes everyone started taking them apart so i thought i would take a liver as a souvenir, Phalanx grabbed the key from one of the snakes body, presumably that key belonged to Filas who was being digested now. We wanted to find out where the key goes so we kept going further.*

*We continued westward i think, until we came across a giant hole filled with the goo from monsters and in the middle of that hole was a giant gem i'd say the size of a human head, someone tried to check the depth of this hole with a stick but didn't manage to reach the depth so Bartholomew used his brains and with fire made all of the goo in the hole explode, someone had to go down the hole and since Phalanx said that we made him go down, he tied a rope around himself and one of the marble trees, just in case me and Golin grabbed hold of the rope aswell, once Phalanx reached the bottom he grabbed the gem and started climbing up, but once he grabbed the gem, the tree that we tied the rope around started dripping goo with increasing speed until it started flowing like a faucet, me and Golin pulled the rope as hard as we could, once Phalanx reached mid way of the hole the goo had almost caught up to him (since the hole was filling up with the goo from the tree) so either Ophe or Roy threw down their rope that wasn't covered in goo and pulled out Phalanx using it. Once Phalanx got out he thrusted the gem up and Bartholomew started investigating it, as he described it, it was something like a heart in a gem that was made with some sort of magic. While we were doing that the hole with the goo filled up and started forming a shape, Phalanx thought it was because of the gem so he threw it right back into the hole and the forming creature collapsed, there were other holes around with gems in them, Roy saw one that was very small and had a gem that could fit inside a clutched fist and took it, needless to say that did something and i think 7 bush monsters came out of the ponds, we managed to kill 3 of them, but then a dozen Wights appeared aswell and we knew we wouldn't win since Roy got quite a beating from one of the grass bush. Roy threw away the gem and we all made a tactical retreat, the monsters didn't seem to chase after us, so we took what we got and went home.*

*We didn't discover what the key was for, but we got some information about the monsters that live inside the screaming forest, I'm interested in finding out where those screams came from.*

Murdock throws the bloodied stick that he used to write in his journal in to the fire, then closes it and starts cleaning the liver that he brought back.