Expedition 1: Your Mountain Lion is Buffering

### Summary

We voyage into the Inkwell Mountains to gather ink, and meet a mountain lion that seems to blink in and out of existence.

### Detailed Writeup

Bright and early in the morning, we make our way out from the city towards the Inkwell Mountains. Their banks are dotted with groups of fellow ink-gatherers and glistening with the last remnants of snow melting into the warmth of summer.

We take the northern path up the mountain. As we make our way across the steepening trail, all of the short folk (the majority of the expedition crew) scurry up without difficulty, but Tolyr gets a 0 on his athletics roll and both winds himself (incurring a level of exhaustion) and takes a nasty fall (6 damage). Calliope snarks at him but offers help making it up the rest of the way.

Along the way, we meet others on the road who are concerned that we’re going in so far. They’re fellow ink-gatherers, and we observe their technique as they harvest the dark ink out of naturally-occurring wells in the mountainside.

Finally, we reach a high overlook. From here we can see practically the entire known lands surrounding Port Vrall. The Blackwater swamp extends to the west, black water fading out into blue ocean. Glittering pale fields are visible to the south, dotted with the icelike shards of thick Bluewood canopy. The enormous Froststone Mountain extends above us, 5 or 6 times the height of the Inkwells, much of it sheer. Nondescript hills line the horizon to the east. The shadowy green forests of Felwood lie in front of them.

With natural 20s on perception, Calliope and Marzipan notice a strange ruined tower in the far hills, but Calliope (with her -3 wisdom) is too distracted and immediately loses track of the path, losing her magically-reinforced balance. Marzipan, on the other hand, gets a clear idea of where the ruins are and how to reach them.

Having reached the far side of the Inkwells, we set out looking for lower-case ink wells. Marzipan instantly notices the telltale signs of ink. He starts in that direction, but fails a survival check and leads us across a patch of acidic lichen that burns us lightly. We each fill our first ink bottles (and Marzipan gets an extra) before the ink well’s exhausted.

Calliope’s staring into the depths of the inkwell, pondering what might be producing the ink within the mountain, when she is suddenly knocked to the ground. The others see what seems to be a mountain lion having appeared atop her out of nowhere, a huge chunk of her flesh in its teeth. Oddly, it appears frozen in place, not moving a whisker.

Initiative begins:

* Calliope cures herself
* Marzipan hits the lion with a sacred flame
* Annie (Tolyr’s microraptor familiar) aids Lahont
* Tolyr blesses the party
* Lahont misses the lion with a crossbow bolt and hides behind a rocky outcropping
* The mountain lion disappears into thin air and reappears with its jaws around Annie (who \*poofs\* into non-existence) and claws Marzipan, faster than we can make out. It then freezes in place again.
* Calliope hits with a firebolt, Marzipan with a rapier strike, Tolyr with a frostbolt
* Lahont crits on a crossbow sneak attack, precisely shooting so as not to spoil the hide, executing it instantly

Calliope inspects the body - looks like a regular mountain lion. She skins it with Marzipan’s help, finding nothing strange in its innards. Tolyr senses dissipating transmutation magic on the body and skins.

Marzipan finds a huge vein of ink with a nat 20. Once the ink is exhausted, we find a tiny tunnel below the inkwell, reaching as far as we can see back into the mountainside. We excavate a bit around the mouth and find some fine filaments coating the inside of the tunnel. Tolyr uses a mage hand to scoop some of the filaments out into a jar, observing that it looks like fungal material of some sort.

Marzipan finds another, smaller well. As we’re harvesting, our digging and noise trigger an avalanche of snow and ice roaring down the mountainside toward us! Tolyr stands unflinching and melts the oncoming snow with a burning hands spell while everyone else tries to dodge out of the way. Marzipan moves just a hair too slowly and gets swamped by the rush of snow. Already wounded by the mountain lion, the impact is enough to send him into unconsciousness.

We desperately scramble to find the mousefolk, who’s been buried somewhere in the avalanche’s wake. After one failed death save, Calliope (with a natural 20 on investigation), notices his boots beside the snow, calculates the avalanche’s trajectory in a flash, and dives in. With a max-value cure wounds and a surprisingly strong gnome dragging him out of the snowbank, Marzipan is mildly concussed but okay.

Lahont takes over ink-finding duty, finding a tiny well followed by a decent-sized one. With the afternoon verging closer to evening, we discuss whether to keep going, potentially exploring down into the Bluewood and camping for the night. With the group uncertain, Lahont suggests a Windhome method of decision-making: throw a feather into the air and let whoever it floats towards decide. He tosses one of Annie’s feathers (RIP), and it floats back in his direction. With his smaller supply of ink bottles long since filled, he decides to turn back.

Calliope takes over ink-finding, using investigation now that she’s starting to understand the flow of the ink through the mountain. Meanwhile, Lahont looks for flint, failing to find any useful rock but instead coming across an old skeleton with a rusty maul and suit of chain mail. Before the others walk over, he finds 4 sp in a rotted pouch on the skeleton’s belt.

Tolyr volunteers his (very cool in Calliope’s opinion) bag of holding to carry the armor back to town. Lahont claims it and the maul out of fairness for having taken way less ink than the rest of the party. Calliope points out that she could make better use of the armor, so Lahont trades it to her for a filled jar of ink.

Calliope finds one last well on the way out as the suns begin to set. On the lookout for danger, Marzipan notices two eagles flying nearby that begin to nest in a nearby tree but seem to startle and quickly fly away. Suspicious, we look around and see a dark flock of birds approaching our position rapidly. Tolyr tries to scare them off with a minor illusion, but they take no heed. With the flock (what Tolyr recognizes as magpies) closing in on us, we flee down the mountainside. Marzipan slows us down a bit with his massive ink haul, but we manage to get away.

We stumble back into down tired, hungry, and wounded but many bottles of ink richer. Final loot tallied below:

**Marzipan:** 12 jars, 1 unit of mountain lion meat

**Tolyr:** 10 jars, 1 jar of fungal filaments

**Calliope:** 9 jars, 1 suit of rusted chainmail, mountain lion skins (1 unit of beast hide)

**Lahont:** 6 jars, 4 sp, a rusty maul, 1 unit of bone (mixed mountain lion and humanoid)