The Discovery of a Freezing Foundation - 24/04/20

Getting past that nasty frog affair... Our adventure today was great! Uhm.. kind of. Basically I heard the goblins you all went out to find were killed but I figured they had to have come from somewhere, right? And really I was trying to stay out of the swamps as much as possible. If every time we leave town we have to crawl through that swamp? Ugh it's going to be awful... So myself (I'm Lucy for anyone I havent said hi to... uh... hi!), Tortleeni the tortle and Zhess, (who just got off the wagon before we headed out) met up and after introductions and Zhess teaching me an awesome game with coins, we decided to try and skirt around the edge of that nasty swamp. After we got outside of the walls we followed the coastline west. Did you know that coast has a giant drop off cliff? Disappointing, right? No beach party. It was pretty easy going and nice dry ground for awhile but the line of mangroves made its way all the way to the cliffs edge... so we had to get our feet wet. I hopped on the (very generous) tortles back and we strode quickly through the muck. That far west it was actually a pretty thin strip of uneventful swamp, because the ground raised after a bit to wonderful dry ground once again!

At the line of Mangroves we did see a ground of swarmapedes that took interest in us. They didn't bite or act too aggressive... but they were real touchy-feely. (Makes your skin crawl thinking of all those legs on you.....doesn't it?) Well a bunch of them started crawling on Tortleeni and one started crawling up my leg. I was just about ready to stab the damn thing when Tortleeni threw some rations to the ground. They all rushed to it and were proper distracted. We booked it out of there. Up the hill we found an expanse of grassland! My only problem with it was the unkempt grass is some 5 feet tall, which.. as you can imagine isn't an ideal situation. We walked through that grass for about an hour and a half before Tortleeni spotted a splash of blood in a flattened out bit of grass. It was a pretty nasty scene. Some guys severed arm, dagger still clenched was laying in the clearing. I could tell whatever killed the man could kill most people in a single blow... We decided to be sneaky to find out where it dragged this man off to, since a blatant trail of blood was smeared off to the west and we weren't sure if he was dead yet... Well, if he wasn't dead when his arm got severed then he probably died while being dragged away. Eventually the trail of blood stopped. The grasslands turned into a rocky outcropping, and after creeping up to the edge we could see the area littered with clothes ... We decided any help we could offer was past and while we were discussing our next move an awful sound from a terrible beast came out of the cave... so we left. Traveling through those grasslands should be done carefully and knowing something is hunting there.

From there most of our day was kind of over, we spent a lot of time walking along the coast and through the grassland so we decided to use what we could remember of the map (thanks for that wonderful work, June) to head south east through the swamps as a 'shortcut' home... So, splashing along we got attacked by some crocodiles. They were HUNGRY. Poor babies looked thin. Two were snapping at Tortleenis front, and man if I could explain to you how strange it is clinging to a tortles bacj as he flips around to drop kick a crocodile to the face?? Man. That was an experience! Something about how I was waving around on his back enticed another 'gator.... who jumped out of the water and nearly snapped my legs off! So I jumped onto its back and rode it to victory! One of the gators DID take a pretty sizable bite out of Tortleeni.... tried to drag him into the water and had him bleeding all over the swamp. We picked up two Gator corpses to bring into town and continued home, knowing it was getting dark soon.. But we got distracted one last time. After trudging through the awful swamps a bit longer we ran into a road. Assuming it was the same road from the map, we started to head south along it.

Along the left side of the road we found a strange ruined foundation that had a weird magical cold coming from it. A hatch in the center was frozen solid. We were able to Crack the ice rather easily to get inside. It was REAL cold. You could HEAR Zhess' teeth chattering and he was proper ready to leave. We explored a few rooms, which had some frozen and frostburned meats and a whole wall of a weird yellow liquid with a bucket suspended in it that made me rather uncomfortable... A very slippery set of stairs led down a very dark passage... I tied my silk rope to a heavy iron door and threw it down the stairs to help us descend. (OH NO. Did I leave it there?) *furiously checks bags, mumbling to herself in disappointment* Damnit! Anyway, didn't get to use it properly on the way down anyway. Tortleeni withdrew into his shell and had us push him down the stairs, where he had a bunch of ice blown on him. I didn't know what by until I tried to rush down the stairs to help him. I slipped on the second stair, and slid all the way down, flat on my back. Lantern and crossbow still in hand I saw he was being set upon by strange ice monsters with piss poor attitudes. I shot one with a crossbow and we both picked ourselves up off the floor. These little pixie things? They exploded when they died! Chilled me right to the bone. Zhess stayed at the top of the stairs, shivering as a plea to leave asap. We poked our head into the last room and we were a bit afraid with its size that it could be trapped, or a lair to something nasty. The cold seemed to be coming from that room, it got WAY colder as we looked in.(edited)

I mean, *I* wanted to stay but with the nasty bite on Tortleeni's leg and Zhess' teeth chattering so loud I couldn't think straight, I agreed to head out and come back another time... As we came out of the cold basement hatch, we found one of the gator corpses was taken by something... Zhess gave the residue it left a sniff and he did NOT recommend that. So we high tailed it down the road back to town, but we had one last thing of note... Four pairs of emerald green eyes stared at us in the darkness behind as we were heading into town, and they let out a howl that chilled my bones more than that freezer. I wasn't scared, just not properly prepared. Nasty goblins, disgusting swamp.