Sliced and Diced

"**Sliced and Diced**" is the 73rd session of the Legend of the Leaves campaign.

It took place in the Demonic Eruptions questline of Arc 5: Dead Souls Rising.

## Synopsis

The leaves proceed south towards Morgur's Mound to retrieve a spell focus of the wizard in Luskan, only to fall victim to horrific traps in the valley along their way.

# Story Development

## Part 1

Tarela Gilff is conscious once again. After Raijin helps her through her panic attack, she asks them to help her float down the river to Blackford Corssing where she will be safe. Bambara tries to interrogate her about Calama but to no avail. She is let go and the party proceeds to the south.

Malcer flies on Darius's Pegasus to the air to get an idea of their surroundings. He makes out a natural stone labyrinth, stretching all the way through the hills where they are heading. The smoke from Mount Hotenow tell him that either dragons are active in the volcano or dwarves from Gauntlgrym are preparing their army for a campaign. As he reports this to the party, he also recalls seeing the hills in the shape of a giant lizard, as if buried underneath the earth, beyond the stone labyrinth to the south.

Traversing to the grasslands west of Neverwinter Wood the party leaves behind the severed bodies of the dwarfs that came before them. Bambara manages to make out the contraptions that are responsible for the dead dwarves.

Although successfully recognizing the dangers of the traps laid before them, Bambara decides to try to deactivate them. However, his attempt goes south. The mechanism by which the traps (a series of buried strings that can cut even through stone) have been made by a superior tinkerer than Bambara thought in the beginning. The traps activate and the party tries to evade the deadly strings shooting from the earth.

Malcer and Lorilon lose a leg each while the rest of the party is mostly unharmed. While trying to retrieve the party members and their severed limbs, Darius's on his pegasus suffers an injury himself and loses an arm.

While sending his pegasus to pick up Bambara, Bambara decides to use his pyrotechnics skills to send a message into the air of a scene from his childhood.

The party regroups at the safe zone outside the trap near Neverwinter Wood. Arguing about Bambara's decisions against the parties will, Malcer spots three dragons, lifting off from the volcano to the south heading towards them. Loirlon sees a flashing light from Neverwinter Woods, the same one they saw when they were arriving by boat.

## Part 2

They had east into the woods. However, being severely injured, traveling through this difficult terrain proves to be harder than they thought. After a couple of hours traveling, Bambara suddenly decides to head south and leaves the party. The rest of them are heading west towards Luskan.

Making the way through the thick forest, the party successfully invades laid out traps on their way while Bambara to the south is unable to orient himself properly. The party comes across a cabin in the woods and they decide to make a long rest there. As they get ready to rest, a female human tribal warrior, Ivy Redstream, arrives with a boar she killed on her back. She is surprised by the presence of the party at her cabin, but then when she sees Lorilon's severed leg, she offers to help.

Lorilon is suspicious of her offer, but Malcer takes it up and she manages, with the help of a spell storing ring and a regeneration spell, to restore his leg. However, after she does so, the ring glows red, and she takes it off and lays down to rest. Bambara, in the meantime, creates a decoy campsite, and decides to rest nearby, hoping the decoy will fool potential intruders.

As the party finishes their long rest at the cabin in the woods, the morning seems strange. They are vacant by Ivy's fever dream in which she mumbles a few sentences in deep speech which Lorilon writes down and shares with the rest of the group. When she finishes, jabberwocks arrive at the scene, not seeming aggressive.

However, a witch rides on one of them and proceeds to hover towards Ivy's bed. The party stands by and does nothing as the witch sits on Ivy's chest and starts to suck her soul out of her mouth.

In the final moment before she succeeds in getting the tribal warrior's soul, Malcer multiple steps in and lays his hands on the sleeping woman, healing her and preventing her soul to be taken by the witch.

The witch looks at Malcer and is amused by his abilities. She steps down from the bed and wordlessly asks Malcer to let her put her hand on his head. As she does, Malcer is overcome by an unbelievable sensation.

However, the sensation is the finger of death spell. Malcer survives, which amuses the witch even more. She smiles and whispers to him that she will need people like him to defeat the "wizard in the sky". She leaves the site with her jabberwocks, only leaving one behind telling him to test them for a round or two.

The party fights, the jabberwock and Lorilon successfully cuts his head off with his vorpal sword. Ivy wakes up from her nightmares, and the sun finally rises. She explains to the party that she was part of a tribe of warriors to the south, and that she was cast away by the tribe because she was picked by Tasha's sister Igwillv for a reason unknown to her. Instead of getting her tribe into danger of falling prey to the witch, Ivy decided to leave, and only the ring of spell storing has kept her safe since, while her survival skills have kept her from harm of the tribal members who want to see your dead for leaving the tribe.

Bambara wakes up to an ambush. Tribal warriors have surrounded him. Their leader Xalvador Farlight tells Bambara to lay down all he has on him. Bambara complies and takes everything he has off, surrendering the items to the tribal warriors. He has been given shackles to put on himself so he can be taken away. Bambara refuses at first, but after a barrage of arrows, he agrees.

Being brought to the village of the tribe, Bambara witnesses horrific scenes of executions of dwarves. However, his capturers tell him that this will not be his faith for he is too valuable in the war against Gauntlgrym.

Bambara is taken by a giant rok to Morgur's Mound in order to be used as a token to bargain with the dwarves from Gauntlgrym. He is been lowered into the depths of the underdark, where he is put in shackles and blood-drained to near death.

After having breakfast with Ivy, she offers them to hunt with her while awaiting the night, when she can restore Lorilon's leg.

Before they go hunting, Lorilon asks Malcer if they should try to contact Bambara to see if he is still alive. Malcer looks at him and tells him: "Let him die", as he proceeds to follow Ivy into the hunt for wild boars.

# Featured Characters

## Leaves

* Lorilon Duskwalker
* Darius Lonewalker
* Malcer Lynk Hornraven
* Bambara Grimmgrin
* Raijin Shou Ho

## New

* Ivy Redstream
* Xalvador Farlight
* Igwillv

## Mentioned

* Calama Glasseye
* Kalmin Gvizd

# Quotes

## Player Characters

* Malcer (kada ga Lorilon pita da li da provjere je li Bambara živ): "Nek umre."
* Raijin (Bambari nakon što je ovaj aktivirao zamke i ispalio vatromet): "Reci zašto si ovo uradio? Ako mi se ne svidi odgovor, leti koplje u facu.)