Lake Demon Hunt (Mission)

"My first time out was pretty interesting - we didn’t accomplish too much, but I definitely feel like it was worth it for me. Hope Fenric isn’t too broken up about us not getting what he was looking for - seemed like he was pretty put out by it. Anyways…

We departed the Last Chance pretty early in the morning and set off to the north, setting a course for the larger lake that some of the party had been to before. We followed the shoreline towards the cliffs. When we got to the craggy area, we ran into a shady looking figure in the center of the road. Reeked of banditry to me, especially since I spotted a friend of theirs hiding behind some rocks, bow and arrow at the ready. Kay pulled some sort of magic though, either arcane or social, and just sorta convinced the person to let us pass. Certainly made the walk much easier. We got through the rest of the craggier foothills no problem - managed to dodge some falling rocks pretty handily. We threw around the idea that it wasn’t a coincidence and that something, maybe the bandits from earlier, was pushing around rocks on travelers. Didn’t notice anyone, but I’m gonna keep an eye out in the future. Heard from the others that this happened before, and rocks happening to fall on travelers twice is a bit too coincidental to me. Eventually we hit the cliff wall and the castle that Kay and Kai got held up in - looked real imposing, like the kind of place you’d expect a giant crab monster to hang around in. We turned westward there, rather than trying to scale the cliffs.

Crags turned to pine forests and we managed to find the lake from earlier without a problem. Didn’t see any other lakes, which we went up to find, so we set up camp and waited for the next day. I kept watch for the second half of the night and noticed a pretty damn sneaky cat spying on us from a tree - looked like a lynx or something, but its eyes were more glow-y than usual. Also noticed a bit of sparkle on its shoulder, might’ve been magical or something. It disappeared when I woke Avos. I’d keep an eye out for them in the future, I doubt magical predatory cats are particularly good signs for our purposes. Might be worth investigating.

In the morning we struck out east, towards where we thought the lakes would be. Didn’t get too far before we ran into a quartet of statues made of armor just sorta standing around, all facing inwards in a square. We all felt that warranted a bit of distance, so we started to skirt it, but whatever magic was in them made ‘em want a fight. We tried to run but they just chased us for like… fifteen minutes. Eventually we figured we’d tire out before they did and started fightin. Fight got pretty hairy for a while there - They all picked one of us to focus, so I climbed a tree figuring I wouldn’t be able to take much of a hit. Damn thing started chopping down the tree I was in! Fenric went down first, got hit pretty hard right off the bat. Avos followed suit but not before taking out a couple himself, and Kay had split off to take care of one on his own. I managed to dodge a quick hit from the one that got Avos and keep him from bleeding out, but after that I got a pretty nasty slice on my back and blacked out. I guess Kay must’ve taken care of the last one because we all woke up a few hours after, a bit worse for wear but in alright shape.

Turns out that in our dash from the armor suits, we actually ran into sight of the lake. Two lakes actually. Didn’t know which to head to so we just picked randomly. Turns out it was the one we were lookin for - there was a castle in the middle on these big stone pillars. Looked like it was ruined, but someone was rebuilding it from wood. There was this bridge of tied together rafts leading from the shore to the center. Avos and I got in the lake to look around a bit, and we noticed two weird things - first, the lake had a gentle current in a circular pattern. My guess would be there’s a whirlpool in the center, but I don’t know what could cause that, or where the water might be going if it’s draining. Second, there was none of the bigger water life you’d expect in a lake. My guess was that someone had stocked the lake themselves, but the others figured there must’ve been something even bigger that was hunting the mid sized stuff but ignoring the smaller. Makes sense to me, made me a bit nervous to be in that water. Anyways, before we checked the bridge out we decided to check out the other lake just in case it was actually what we were looking for. Didn’t find too much of note except for a statue of a big person holding a flail and scales. It had an inscription at the base that labeled it as I\*U\*S\*\_\*L\*E\*X (without the asterisks), and the others got pretty jumpy. Apparently that’s who those arbiters serve. The alcove the statue was in was covered in inscriptions that looked like they were asking for justice, so I’d guess that’s what the god’s domain is. The others told me not to say the name aloud, so I’m being extra careful around it.

We headed back to the other lake after Kay took some rubbings of the inscriptions, and we checked out the shore side of the bridge. Ran into an old guy named Jerome, or at least we thought so. He claimed to be a tinker who had gotten robbed in the middle of the night and traced the thing back to this castle, only had a glaive and his knapsack on him. Some stuff didn’t add up though - who steals from a tinker after all? He claimed to have only been there for two days, but the rock he was sitting on looked like it had been worn down from years of sitting, and he didn’t seem to need to eat or drink. We actually met him before we checked out the other lake, and I tried to sneak up on him when we came back to see if he was acting any differently. No luck though. We invited him to stay the night with us, and he did, but he disappeared halfway through it. Left what looked like a small crater in the dirt, and a couple snapped branches above where he was. Basically looked like he jumped away. He came back in the morning, and we confronted him about all that - eventually his voice deepened, he stood up to his full height, and told us some of the truth, or at least what we think is the truth. Turns out he’d been there for a hell of a while, and had been warning adventurers away or sending them in to their deaths. Apparently he wants some of the loot that’s in the castle - not sure why he can’t get it himself. He was kind enough to tell us we weren’t ready to take on whatever was inside, so we decided not to risk it, especially since we had already been out two nights. He should still be there if my guess is right. We think he might be some sort of fiend or fey creature - seemed to have a penchant for deals and lies, and made a bit of a point of not giving us his real name.

We set out for home after that. Only thing of note we encountered on the way back was a vandalized waymarker. Looked like it had been marked by some sort of gang - it pointed towards a mine, and the graffiti said a lot of “stay off our turf” sort of stuff. Main point of interest was a name - Silverspike. Might be worth investigating in the future. For now though, I’m just glad to have gotten back in one piece. I’m feeling much stronger than I did before. There’s a sort of warmth in the pit of my stomach that’s a bit jarring, but I’m getting more comfortable with it. Gotta do some more exercise to really get used to it."

*―Wivaun Sandstrider's adventure log*