Moose Tracks

> **What I'm hearing is... kill all the wilderness. Take no risks.**
>  Kai
>
>

**Moose Tracks** is the 7th episode of the Severed Sons' *Rime of the Frostmaiden* campaign.

## Episode Summary

*The Sons explore the forest outside of Lonelywood, searching for the White Moose. Fang stumbles upon clues as to what happened to his parents.*

After Kai finishes flirting with the town barkeep, the Sons head north into the Lonely Wood in search of the White Moose. Soon after discovering a set of moose tracks, the party also notices a cabin on a low promontory overlooking the lake below. They opt to follow the moose for the time being, and before long happen upon a regular moose standing in a clearing. Fang attempts speaking to it, but it bolts deeper into the forest. At this, Mud declares he is no longer Mud - he is now Slush; he says tortles have a tradition of changing their name when they decide the time is right. This prompts general consternation among the rest of the party, but it quickly becomes acceptance of the Tortle's new name. Donaar awards the tortle yet again with the title "the funniest guy I know."

With no active moose tracks to follow, the party heads up to the cabin to investigate, and finds it derelict. Curtains blow through the broken windows; inside, Fang finds a multitude of claw marks and a few axe marks on the interior walls, as well as all of the furniture inside broken and dotted with small splashes of blood. He determines it has been several weeks since the blood was spilled. In the rear room of the cabin, an even more vicious scene awaits, with claw marks covering every surface from floor to ceiling, and all of the windows boarded up both inside and out, and four broken locks on the door to the room. Fang is able to determine that all of the scratches in this room were made by right-handed claw marks, but is unsure what this might mean.

Fang also finds a heavily damaged book in the rubble, the cover of which is emblazoned with the holy symbol of Pelor. After Trax overcomes his fear and joins Fang inside, he too discovers a few loose pages of the book, which appears to be a journal. Trax reads some of the entries out loud, which detail a journey of two people north through the Spine of the World and into Icewind Dale, specifically into Lonelywood. Further pages of the journal talk about the two building the cabin together and learning ice fishing, only to face some sort of accident out on the lake, which the journal did not elaborate upon further. Fang's father had to tend to Ambar for some time after that.

Fang recognizes the name of his mother, Ambar, and the writing of his father. With signs from the journal and the state of the cabin pointing towards the idea of Fang's mother losing control of her shifted form, Kai asked Fang if she had any violent tendencies in the past, to which Fang replied calmly but categorically that she never had any such issues. And yet, the final page of the journal read *"She isn't able to control it anymore. We have to find a way..."*

With the cabin duly explored, the Sons return to the woods and follow another set of moose tracks, only to realize they've been walking in circles. With their eyes freshly alerted to the possibility of magic in the area, they are able to successfully follow a set of moose tracks to a large tomb flanked by statues that appear elven in nature. The central area of the complex features what appears to be a moondial with a large central gnomon, surrounded by braziers. While Trax begins to cast *Detect Magic* as a ritual, Kai pokes his head through a hole in a wall and finds a number of woodland creatures huddled inside, including a large, angry White Moose. The beast quickly downs Kai, but Fang is able to heal the shinobi, who continues playing dead until he can attempt to climb on top of the moose, leaving it open to attack from Trax's *Magic Missile*. The party is unnerved by the fact the moose can speak, and by its dying words: "She will only make more of us."

Trax, having given up on the *Detect Magic* spell he lost earlier, decides to attempt lighting the braziers. Kai, meanwhile, investigates deeper within the complex, overhearing two voices from inside an inner chamber seemingly without any way in or out. Kai asks them to come out, saying they mean no harm, but once the more arrogant of the two voices insults his intelligence, he promises to kill them the same way they killed the moose. With the party split up, and Trax having failed lighting the braziers several times over, he is attacked by a banshee.