03.07.2021 - Saving Warder

We took our naps while Klaub sold out of his Pey’s Delights before reconvening to discuss the plans to go find Warder today. (The whispers tell me that Klaub talked with Peyson Virith about when we are leaving; he seemed to think we wouldn’t be left behind but we should be leaving in 4-5 days.) On our way out of town, headed back towards Warder’s camp, we stopped to go book shopping! I got a new journal for all of my pretty flowers from Marko and Kalub got a book about Shadow Mother. Klaub and Jerome also seem to think that Marko looks a little weirder today, almost like he has a longer, more bulbous nose and his ears are a little rounder.

   After picking up our new cart, we headed for the camp. Nearing his camp we noticed that it was unusually quiet. Marko said it smelled like dead horse that had been there for a few days, and upon further investigation Jerome saw that the horses Makro smelled had been killed by something very big. We then heard a rumbling coming from the structure we had slept in when we were here. Jerome went to check it out very carefully before hurrying back past us towards the cart motioning for us to follow as quietly as possible. When he thought we were far enough away he explained that there were some huge doglike creatures sleeping in there, but that there was also a note from Warder that said he had been there recently and he was okay. Suddenly, there was rumbling from underneath us as a gi-ant came up from the ground and tried to charge at us. From behind there came the snuffling of some creatures who charged at us from behind. In almost no time thought, we had vanquished them, and Kalub kept the horses under control from the cart so that he didn't get lost on the road. He determined that if harvested correctly, the armor from the gi-ant could be made into armor, so we put it into the cart.

Marko had spotted a trail with a sign to the Dustrock Mine. There was this strange silence that fell over us when we were going along the path, and we couldn’t even talk anymore! As we approached, there were some strange lights that appeared ahead of us. The cart broke, so we hid it before continuing along our way. We left the horses outside the mine, so they wouldn[t get too scared if we found more gi-ants. The ground looked very traveled, and there were lots of muddy looking stones past where these cool railcar tracks stopped just outside the mine. Feeling around, the ground was very soft, and when I went a little farther into the tunnel to follow the lights the ground collapsed and I fell into a very big hole and the lights disappeared. At the bottom, there was a large milky looking sack in the center of a large cavern. Shortly after I started poking around, Jerome, Marko, and Kalub all came down after me, landing in a pile. There was a doorway we spotted at the other end of the cavern after Kalub smashed the sack to reveal it as an egg for the gi-ants. The doorway led to another chamber, but this one had a huge hole in the center of it and a few minutes after walking in, two more gi-ants came charging at us. They were no trouble because I summoned a unicorn the same way Shadow Mother used to!

Jerome then went down the hole, but when Marko and I tried to follow, the ceiling fell in on us and Kalub and Jerome had to dig us out. Once on the other side, we noticed the next area was more like a mine than where we had been, and there were signs of fairly recent combat. It looked like there used to be multiple ways out of the room, but there had been a cave in over one of the exits that seemed almost intentional. This room had four more eggy looking things in it that we took care of before settling in to dig out the cave in. While Klaub moved the stones, we went to look down a different hall where we found another huge cavern filled with more eggs and a few more gi-ants.

Once clearing enough space to go in there, we noticed that there was a small fire with four hunched forms around it. Three of them were very shiny and the other one was Warder! None of them looked very good so Klaub did some praying to Shadow Mother to heal them and we shared some food. However, Jerome started to argue over who was going to get to claim the job when it was all over if we finished it for them, and he screamed to bring the gi-ants to come eat them because they were not agreeing with him. The scream summoned the gi-ants from the room we had found, so I summoned some stinky flumphs to come help us while everyone did their best not to get eaten by the giant bugs and those funny lights that reappeared and tried to eat everyone. We managed to save everyone without dying and in the end Wardo gave Marko his very fancy shield. I asked the three fancy cat people--Pin, Stitch, and Sew--if they knew Basket or Shadow Mother because they were cool adventurers too, and they thought I was crazy because she was just a pampered purrincess. Then we all went to go out of the cave before we talked to Warder about where he is going now that we have saved him.