4.23.22 - Bloom of Greenmist

The wyverns were getting closer to our little group. I turned around and started trying to distract them, but before I knew what was happening I was falling through the air, no longer an eagle. From there our encounter with the wyverns was absolute chaos. She-rah tried to come to my rescue only to join me in freefall while I saw that Cannon was pulling something out  of his beard while releasing lightning from his nose. Rhys managed to get most of the wyverns to leave us alone, and even slew the one that wouldn’t. By then, She-rah and I had managed to wrangle one of our own to help slow our fall towards the ground using a robe and her handaxe to lasso it. Once we had all regained control of the speed at which we were falling, we reset our course for the ferry run by Warsh.

   We arrive at the rundown shack owned by the ferryman, Warsh. The house there seems to be in much the same state of disrepair, but it seems to have become a bustling business since our last visit. There are quite a few young couples setting up camp on the beaches nearby. When we stopped to talk to one of them why they were camping we were told, Warsh still sticks to his one trip a day policy. They also said they were going to Greenmist because it was a very fertile place and they were having problems starting their families. We asked why they were bringing their belongings with them and they said it was because they have to stay on the island if they want to keep their baby until it is born. We still seemed confused so they continued to explain that the old women that lived there had built a shrine and those who drank from it would become pregnant, so far it had worked but it had only been a few months and there were no babies yet.

Rhys and She-rah went to try to talk Warsh into taking a second trip today while I stayed with Cannon to trim egg shells out of his beard because it seems Cannon was right about there being a dragon egg in his beard and it wasn’t him who was blowing lightning from his nose it was a little baby bronze dragon. He said her name should be Ember which seems very fitting for her. Then, he decided to send a message to Nostalix to warn her about Vlad and ask her if she knew anything about weird pregnancies or hags, but he did not get a reply. Cannon said he thinks she doesn’t like us anymore because of what happened in Phlan with all the dragons and Vorgansharax. When the others came back, they told us Warsh was being as stubborn as ever, but Rhys had a way for us to walk across to the island so we wouldn't have to until morning to get across.

   As we approached the island we could see there was new swampier land mass that had sprouted along the backside of the island and the town seemed to have grown quite a lot. The island was also a great deal greener and more alive with foliage from our last visit. There were also a variety of new buildings, mostly houses, around town and a large shrine-like area at the highest point where there used to be a church. We began to make our way through town admiring the changes when we heard fighting from up ahead. Outside of what looked to be a tavern, we saw two men fighting, one of them seemed very tired and began accusing the other of adultery and visiting the dreams of his wife and all the other women on the island. We managed to separate them with Cannon and She-rah taking the one who was accusing the other home and Rhys and I taking the accused one with us. He introduced himself as Erick and the other as Hillen. Erick told us the two men had come in at the same time and were actually quite good friends, but they had been having bad dreams about each other and they had heard other men complaining about their dreams too. His dreams were about three glowing red eyes coming out of the water and they gradually started when they got here but they had gotten so much worse the longer they stayed. Each man has a different dream, but several have had dreams about their friends being unfaithful to their wives while others have had dreams that have inspired new fears. He said his friend Duvot doesn’t like the water anymore and Malcom doesn’t do spiders.

   We asked him to take us to the shrine while telling us more about the odd things about this place, when we started looking around to see none of the women had even noticed the confrontation. Also, there were lots of women shopping around the marketplace, but the only men we saw were the one who we had found fighting. The women all seemed like they had all become pregnant at the same time, but we knew they were all still arriving one boat load per day. While humans are weird, that didn’t seem right to us, so we asked Erick what he thought and he told us that Granny Lolmetta and Auntie Gristlegums said that all babies should be born on Midsummer. With that, we arrived at the shrine we had been told about to see an open air temple with a lifelike statue of Elisande standing in the center of the fountain which couples were praying to. Erick took the opportunity to slip off back down the hill as an elderly woman approached from around the fountain.

   The Auntie gave us her toothy grin as Cannon and She-rah joined us at the temple. She welcomed us and wanted to offer us her gratitude for keeping Elisande safe during her time away from the island. We began to ask questions about some of the changes and the weirdness we had encountered already in town. Auntie Gristlegums told us the swamp was not their doing and they wanted it gone because it was drawing the men in and they were disappearing which is bad if you want a place for families to establish themselves. When we asked about why they would want families on their island, she said they were going to have to keep feeding Elisande and she was going to be very hungry when she arrived. And speaking of families, I had family staying here on the island in the little square cottage with the goats out front, they would be able to help us get some answers. The only thing we could get her to tell us about the swamp was that there was an aberrant creature living there that was causing the dreams the men were having. We managed to convince her to let Elisande make her choice about hagdom if we could find the thing at the center of the swamp that didn't belong.

   By now the sun was setting, so we went back down the hill to the large building the men had come from. The sign on the door said the tavern was called The Rummy's Rum Run. We  got rooms and settled in for the evening. I had a fitful night’s rest about a creature with glowing red eyes and a tentacle trying to steal my pixie in a bottle away from me. When I woke, I pulled it out of my bag of holding and secured it to my belt so I could make sure I knew where it was at all times.