The Great Sea Road Campaign/Session 6

After Tarragon's announcement that her goat Juniper has gone missing and that the party should stop to look for it, Simon says that he doesn't actually care about finding the goat and walks off up the mountain. Ashleigh throws a rock at Simon as he walks away. JP Hadid decides to head up the mountain with Simon to do some treasurehunting in the mountain caverns. Daeron and Leila go with them to look for lodgings.

Ashleigh leads the rest of the party in tracking the goat, which appears to have wandered into the marshes at the foot of the mountains. Walking through the marshes, Ashleigh and Grokkus hear noises from something moving through the water near them. Grokkus shoots his crossbow into the water and manages to hit something. The party finds themselves surrounded by eight large swamp reptiles of some sort, which seem to be evaluating them cautiously. Ashleigh throws her harpoon at one of them and spears it through the arm. As she reels the harpoon in, the reptile is pulled out of the water and revealed to be a nearly-human-sized lizard. The lizard screams extremely loudly (Tom: "awwwuuaaaaaauurgh awwwaaaaarrrrrrruuuauagggh"), until Ashleigh hits it over the head hard enough to knock it out. The seven other lizardpeople emerge from the water and begin to converge on the party angrily. Ashleigh harpoons one lizard and attempts to swing it into another lizard, but the lizard manages to somehow unharpoon itself and bites her.

Elsewhere on the mountainside, Simon hears the lizards' weird screaming sounds, and concludes that the goat-hunting party may be in trouble. JP, Daeron, and Leila decide to keep heading up the road, while Simon runs back down to the marshes toward the source of the screaming.

In the marsh, three of the lizards attempt to attack Grokkus. He spurs his horse ("Rocinante 17") into charging at them, and shoots one of the lizards through the head with his crossbow. One of the other lizards leaps up and bites him while pulling him out of the saddle into the water, while the other knocks Rocinante over and begins to bite into it and drown it.

Sam and Gale try to pull the lizards off of the drowning Grokkus and his horse, but fail. Three other lizards try to throw a sort of net at Ashleigh, but fail. Maureen tries to pull Grokkus out of the water but instead falls in herself. Billblo tries to help Maureen but ends up not doing much of anything. Grokkus is very much drowning at this point. He flails around with his dagger and does manage to hit the lizard that's drowing him, but the lizard hangs on and continues to bite him.

Ashleigh harpoons another lizard, and the remaining lizards (minus the one grappling with Grokkus) decide that the more appetizing target is Grokkus's now-dead horse. The party works together and manages to pull Grokkus out of the water, while the other lizards all drag away Rocinante's corpse. Simon arrives and chases after the retreating lizards, but they manage to get away.

Simon extremely doesn't get why the rest of the party is so intent on still tracking down this goat, especially given that we have now lost a horse and nearly a goblin over it. Tarragon is bawling her eyes out. Simon is finally eventually convinced to help track down the goat. The wounded Grokkus, along with Maureen and Billblo, leave the group and head back to the great sea road.

The party follows the goat's tracks up out of the marsh and into the foothills, in a path that begins to curve back around toward the road's mountain pass. The party reaches a cave, where they can hear faint goat noises echoing within. After entering the cave, the passage opens up into a wide cavern space with a stream running through it. Simon follows the sound of the goat noises and finds Juniper. Simon also hears a whooshing noise and sees a faint red glow coming from deeper inside the cave, and goes on to investigate. The rest of the party catches up and Tarragon reunites with Juniper. Water suddenly starts pouring into the cave, and the party runs for the exit. Tarragon gets swept up into the wave of rushing water, but Gale manages to catch ahold of her and Juniper.

Ashleigh, watching the party get pulled toward the "jaws" of the cave stream opening, and seeing the glowing red light of the "eyes" she remembers so well, is swept up into delusions of an invisible red-eyed whale eating her last remaining family member, and leaps into battle. She launches her harpoon at the glowing red "eye" and destroys it, shattering it into tiny shards of crystal. Ashleigh concludes that she had been tricked by a wizard into seeing an illusion of a whale. Simon chews out Tarragon again.

Meanwhile, on the great sea road, Grokkus, Maureen, and Billblo reach the abbey of the Cult of the Peaks, high up in the mountain pass, and meet up with Daeron, Leila, and JP. Grokkus gets some medical treatment for his bite wounds, and then he, Maureen, and Billblo head to the lodgings that JP had arranged for the party and the three of them settle down for a nap.

Back at the cave, Sam concludes that what the party actually witnessed happening was that the cave has a saltwater inlet somewhere in it and what they saw with the cave flooding was an effect of the tides. Sam concludes that the mountain cave having tides in it is something of a religious miracle that warrants further investigating by the Cult of the Tides. He also concludes, though, that given the danger involved and the fact that the party has already been through a lot that day, it would be better to simply mark the cave with some holy symbols and head off to reunite with the rest of the party at the abbey of the Cult of the Peaks. Everyone meets up at the abbey as night falls, and goes to sleep.