11/08/2020 - Wheelbarrow weirdness, foggy forests and magial mishaps

## TL:DR

* Narko didn’t understand the concept of wheelbarrow races, so the others demonstrated one for him.
* The group opted to go through the forest, but were very loud and got attacked by dozens of wasp swarms and some weird gremlin creatures that kept casting fog clouds everywhere.
* The islands wild magic was on top form, with almost every magic user suffering some sort of magical mishap.
* Eventually the group escaped the wasps and made it to a suspicious looking ice bridge. They avoided the bridge by using Narko as a flying ferry, then made their way through a tricksy illusion-casting gorge.
* After making their way through the gorge the group set up camp for the night, trying their best to ignore the sounds of screams all around them, which Aravae had warned them not to listen to.

## Route planning

At the top of the tricksy ladder, Ves outlined what Aravae had told her about how to get to the giants. They first had two options: One, hook a left through the frozen forests, where they’d have to be super quiet, or two, hook a right across a glacier with “malicious ice”. Then, they’d have to follow a gorge whilst ignoring both screams and malignant signs.

Pierce was very intrigued by the concept of malicious ice, but Caitlin was determined to avoid icy water at all costs. Ever the diplomat, Rocky suggested going up the forest way and back down the icy way, which would also allow them to see if Narko made a good toboggan! Surprisingly, Narko agreed that if things went well with the giants, he would consider playing the part of group toboggan.

## Wheelbarrow race!

As they walked to the forest, discussion inexplicably turned to whether Narko could pull carts. Narko clarified that he could if he wanted to, but he wasn’t a horse so he didn’t. Azurial asked whether he’d consider pulling a gun turret. Narko admitted he’d at least consider pushing one. Confused by Narko’s reluctance to push/pull things, Rocky asked how centaurs did wheelbarrow races. Narko didn’t even know the concept of a wheelbarrow race, so the others decided to demonstrate with a three-way race. Azurial and Ves, vs Rocky and Leo, vs Pierce and Caitlin. Despite a strong showing from Rocky and Leo, Azurial and Ves stormed to victory, though Narko was still perplexed as to where and why such a manoeuvre would ever be necessary. Leo explained that it was usually something done for fun, usually by children. Narko said that he’d never seen a centaur do such a thing, and he’d certainly never done this with his daughter. Leo said he should probably start loving his child then. Narko seemed a tad concerned that he’d got love wrong all these years.

## Wasps and fog

As they neared the forest, Ves shrouded the group in eery shadows and remined them to be quiet. Unfortunately, the group were still pumped on the raw adrenaline that could only be stimulated by a wheelbarrow race and were incredibly loud. Leo and Narko literally walked into each other, their heavy armour clanging together, which caused Caitlin to burst into laughter.

As Ves shot the group an angry glare, she suddenly noticed a strange buzzing noise. Turning around, she saw a shadow fly between some trees. Suddenly, Caitlin let out a yell, as a swarm of wasps began stinging her body and head. Realising his glaive was useless against wasps, Narko quickly lit his torch, whilst Leo (who clearly had a particular distaste for insects) managed to quickly kill many of them with a holy shout of “get the fuck out of here you fucking bugs”.

With the wasps distracted, Caitlin sensibly ran up a tree, from where she noticed a strange icicle morph into a devilish looking gremlin creature. Ves then fired a spray of poison into the remaining wasps. Sadly, this did not go well. Not only did the wasps dodge her spray, but the islands wild magic caused Ves to simultaneously cast a fog cloud across the entire group, blinding everyone.  This magical mishap caused many more swarms to dart out of the nearby trees, which Azurial immediately smote with his radiant hammer. As Rocky hit out less successfully with Rosie, Pierce let rip with a mighty thunderclap. This was good as it killed many wasps, but bad as the noise attracted more wasps. Thankfully, Breena was on hand to throw some alchemical fire, giving Pierce and Azurial time to run out of the fog. However, as soon as they got of the fog the gremlin popped up and cast a second fog cloud.

The next few rounds of the foggy fight were somewhat chaotic. Rocky got brutally mugged off by the wasps, though was aided by the fire and swearing of Narko and Leo.  Azurial tried and failed to locate the gremlin creature, eventually managing to escape the fog. Caitlin wisely climbed high into a tree to see above the fog, enabling her to shout out directions to escape the forest. Ves then summoned a massive lightning storm, absolutely annihilating several swarms. Breena ran out of bombs, but wielded her dagger with critical accuracy. And Pierce used a firebolt to great effect.

However, despite many many wasps being killed, more and more swarms kept appearing, and were beginning to do some serious damage to certain party members. Furthermore, several more gremlin creatures appeared, all of whom began casting blasts of cold and/or more fogginess. Realising the swarms were not going to stop, Narko shouted to the others to run for it whilst brandishing his torch at the nearest gremlin, doing a surprising amount of damage. Unfortunately, Rocky was unable to follow Narko’s suggestion, as three particularly persistent wasps refused to leave him alone. A particularly angry Leo then chopped the arm of the nearest gremlin, who shattered into hundreds of icy pieces.

## Runaway time

Agreeing with Narko’s assessment of the situation, the rest of the group ran for it, with Ves calling down another brutal shard of lightening as she went. Rocky did not join in with the group evacuation, as he was being attacked relentlessly by three wasps, his new nemeses, who try as he might he just couldn’t kill. Seeing the others run, Narko also made a dash for it, holding out his hand to pick up Breena as he charged past.

As the group ran, they came to a large icy crevasse blocking their path. Azurial was able to easily misty step across, getting a more positive magical mishap as he did so, which allowed him to run even further on the other side. Seeing Ves get savaged by another swarm, Pierce encouraged them to bugger off with some well-placed dissonant whispers, before following Caitlin into and across the crevasse. Narko then did an unusually graceful jump-fly manoeuvre across the crevasse, with Breena still on his back.  The now wasp-free Ves then healed herself before casting jump and long-jumping the heck out of the crevasse.

This left just Leo and Rocky in the waspy side of forest. Rocky was still unable to kill his three nemeses, so made a run for it. This did not go brilliantly, with the wasps savagely stinging him to within 1 HP of terrible things. Thankfully, Leo was on hand to finally swear the three remaining wasps to death. This triggered yet more magical mayhem, with a spectral shield appearing out of nowhere to add further protection to Leo’s already tanky armour. Leo then decide that his spectral shielded needed a friend, so he summoned a spectral hammer to attack one of the remaining gremlin creatures. Unbelievably, this triggered another magical mishap, this time causing Leo to be unable to talk without shouting.

Just as Rocky thought he was finally free of wasps, another swarm charged towards him. Seeing this, Narko dropped Breena and charged back over the crevasse to help his friend. However, before he got there, Rocky let rip a furious stream of dissonant whispers, killing the entire swarm. As he did so, the islands wild magic surged again, instantaneously transforming Rocky into a potted plant! Thankfully Narko arrived in time to pick of plant-pot-Rocky and jump-fly him back across the crevasse, at which point he transformed back to Rocky, still in Narko’s arms. Seeing everyone finally across to safety, Leo struck at the final gremlin with his hammer, killing it with a (very loud) shout before making it across the crevasse to join the others.

## Malignant messages

After several more hours the group finally made it out of the forest, though found themselves facing a 40ft long ice bridge over a very deep and dangerous looking chasm. The bridge had a sign with the message “very safe bridge”, which seemed suspicious to say the least. After a cheeky short rest, the group decided to avoid the bridge altogether by using Narko as a flying ferry. With his wind rune combined with Ves’s jump spell, Narko was easily able to jump-fly across the chasm. It took several minutes of very tiring jumpage, but with the help of his giants-might rune he was eventually able to transport everyone across.

The group then made it to the gorge Aravae had told Ves about. The gorge was accompanied by another message, this time reading “horrible gorge for pirates”. After a bit of discussion about whether this message implied the gorge would be great for them as they weren’t pirates, the group decided to just risk it and walk through the gorge. Leo could see nothing suspicious down its 250 ft length, so surely nothing could possibly go wrong…

About 1/3rd of the way into the gorge, Leo, Narko and Azurial suddenly noticed that the gorge walls had started closing in on them! In a panic, Leo began running backwards, whilst Narko decided to charge forward. Seeing these three shout and panic, the others were confused, as nothing seemed wrong to them. Realising they must be seeing some sort of illusion, Ves shouted out that all was fine, which was thankfully enough to shift the illusion. However, Narko decided he really didn’t like being in the gorge, so decided to carry on with his charge and recklessly (though surprisingly majestically) pranced out of the gorge. Thankfully this didn’t seem to trigger any other ill-effects, so the others followed more calmly.

## Screams in the night

As the group existed the gorge, they realised that night was quickly falling. Ves decided to look for a place to camp, eventually finding a nice spot enclosed by several boulders. As Ves searched, everyone noticed several screaming noises that seemed to be getting closer. However, remembering Aravae’s advice, everyone ignored the screams and settled in for the night.

Narko took first watch, seeing nothing untoward. However, despite using the correct technique for warming up (star jumps), he got exhaustedly cold. Thankfully the others didn’t get so cold, and the rest of the night passed without incident.