A Very Regrettable Expedition

Savage Frontier - Log 1, The Mouth of Doom.

We arrived at the infamous Hope, I am not impressed in the slightest, it looks like a generic farming village that had a mishap and accidentally burned down half of their own town. Arnulf told us to keep put and gather as much information as we could while he was out investigating a rumour of a temple out to the south, he thinks could be related to our problem. Ida is not good at “staying put” so she went out with a different group to hunt some goblins for coin, she has always had trouble staying in one place... or doing what she is told. So now I'm in this backwards town alone, I did see a bounty looking for strong warriors for a dungeon exploration mission, perhaps earning some gold while they are both gone is a good idea. “Strong warriors” Well I see an issue already, my frail body can barely lift a sword let alone swing it, perhaps some alchemical aid is needed as I do love an excuse to brew potions.

“Experimental Rage” was a success! My body has almost tripled in mass, just lifting vials causes them to crack in my grasp, it's going to take some getting used to but I can definitely get away with being a “Strong warrior” now, swinging a sword can’t be too difficult. My superior intellect has always made the adventurer types threatened so I must play the brute while out with these fools. We had a brief introduction before heading out, a majority of them seem like children who can't make up their mind which direction they wish to walk, I feel this will be one long and excruciating expedition. There isn't a brain cell between them, the only remotely intelligent lifeform in our group is a cleric named Borin, let’s hope he will give some guidance to this group of infants.

We made it to the “Mouth of Doom”, a very interesting place to be sure. We spent several hours deciding which door looked safe, I never spent so much of my life looking at doors before. A very “optimistic” dwarf was convinced the door he was standing by was safe and asked for me to open it, cowardice is my first thought, always safer to get someone else to check out a dangerous tomb than yourself. Of course it was trapped but thanks to my new body I took little damage, whilst this was going on another part of our party wandered off and triggered a similar trap. The two halfling thought it was a good idea to rush forward without any muscle to protect them, of course it ended poorly as when I exited the tunnel to follow them I saw a large iron snake which was uncovered by the two stupid halfling. They ran away closing the door behind them then rushed ahead to a different room and triggered even more traps. I sprinted to hold the door closed to stop the iron serpent from killing us all, I heard shouting ahead where a part of the group moved to and I believe a member of our party was slain by something, I could not see what.

We retreated back to the main antechamber and actually tried to come up with a plan this time. This is the last time I put my life in the hands of halfling, a race of idiots. At this point we found nothing of worth and lost a member of the exploration group already, I was tempted to head back to town until Borin actually came up with a solid plan of “sticking together”. After some trouble with the smaller folk we did just that and this terrible adventure started to look slightly less terrible. We headed northwards and encountered some undead, kobolds to be exact, must of been digging around these parts before swiftly killed by the one of the thousand threats living in this god forsaken death trap of a temple. The group encountered a strange door, of course they volunteered me to investigate and again, another trap, my hand was stuck to the door and I may or may not have...panicked. Luckily I was wearing gloves and just slipped right out of them, a shame, those were my favourite gloves. The room behind the door had a similar trap design, some type of intense glue, once stuck there was no way to...unstuck. I tried to voice my analysis but it was impossible to get a word in and over the next twenty minute they came to that conclusion anyways luckily. We maneuvered around the room and a large stash of gold was awaiting us, finally something good today!

Pushing forward one of the two halflings found a secret door leading to a burial chamber of some kind dedicated to a knight, who this knight was I am not sure but seemed important, the room was covered in these disgusting eel-like creatures that leaped around the room. After quickly dispatching them I took some samples, their blood has a potent substance for resisting poisons, this could come in handy. Upon pushing the sarcophagus open a ghoul was waiting to leap on me from the inside, its stench was foul and almost caused me to vomit, for the first time today the group actually used their brains and used the fire from the hanging chandeliers to set the ghoul on fire, quickly destroying it. As we searched its charred corpse we found quite the magnificent jewelled necklace, after losing a member of our group we decided it was a good idea to head back to town and see how much we could get for this artefact, I couldn't have left sooner to be honest. After some discussion with the local vendors we all managed to get a cut of around 200 gold each , I wouldn't say it was easy money but I am over the moon today is finally over.

I hope I never encounter these adventurers again...