Session 49 - Iwee Somehow Uses Insight and Persuasion to Navigate a Swamp!
20th May 2022 - 19:45 - 11:30
In-game timeline: Start of session: 1489DR "The Feast of the Moon". End of session: 1489DR Nightal 2
Our "Heroes" are cautiously recovering from a tough battle with some sneaky, quick and cunning fey creatures. Jaxii is very exhausted. The patch of darkness that caused them so many problems slowly disappears, but none of the creatures that the party think are still around seem to be visible. Hence, the caution that the our "Heroes" are, for once perhaps, displaying.
They approach the unmoving body of who they assume to be the dryad, Calista, which is lying at the bottom of a large, old oak tree. Derrick can see a thin, silver rope, loosely tied around the leg of the body and wrapped around the tree.
Derrick approaches the auburn-haired dryad and is able to discern that she is sleeping, or unconscious, but luckily not dead. Jaxii tries to encourage Derrick to lick her foot. Not sure why. He refuses, but instead he nudges her body with his foot.
And Derrick promptly falls to the ground, seemingly asleep.
Karoshi has a quiet word with his sentient rope, Lionel. He ties a lasso onto the end of Lionel, and then throws the end towards the sleeping Derrick. Lionel manages to work out what Karoshi meant, and it loops around Derrick's leg and they pull Derrick's sleeping body away from Calista, dragging his face over the dead leaves, dirt and brambles on the way - the Paladin seeming to aim for the worst of the mess on the ground as he drags the fighter towards him.
Spurred on by this success, Karoshi then ties a grappling hook to the end of Lionel and throws it towards Calista's body, hoping for it to land next to the body and drag the silver rope off of her. Unfortunately his aim is off, and the hook lands squarely on the body of the dryad, causing some impact damage as the heavy metal hook digs into her stomach. As Lionel then does as he was told and crawls down the body to hook the silver rope, the thin, gossamer robe of Calista is ripped from her navel to her feet as the hook slowly tears down her body. Luckily her skin remains intact, though a little reddened by the dragging iron hook.
The plan, such as it was, and despite the poor throw, does seem to work, and Lionel manages to unhook the silver rope from Calista's leg, removing it from her body. She seems to be free, though still remains asleep.
The group turn their attention to the sleeping Derrick. Iwee throws some water on him, because, well, why not? and then blasts a random note through her bagpipes in his ear. She disturbs all the nearby creatures, but Derrick doesn't wake. At least not immediately. A little while later he does start to stir, however.
The group manage to persuade their "friend" that it was his fault that Calista is lying with her robe torn open. He remembers nothing of this. Iwee and Jaxii continue to persuade him of how he managed to fall forward to tear her dress, then fall backwards onto his face and drag himself through the wet leaves and brambles. Derrick is confused.
At this point, Calista starts to wake. She is a little dazed, but after some discussion she quickly works out the situation. She is very grateful for the help from the group and convinces them that now she is awake, and is prepared, the Quicklings and Darklings, should any more remain, will cause her no further problems. She asks that the group tell The Hunter to visit her in the morning after she has had a chance to rest and ensure the other Fey will not be able to cause issues.
Calista offers her greatest treasures for the group to choose one as a thank you for their help. She produces a number of seemingly random objects from within her tree. As Iwee is looking at a purse and working out that it seems to have great storing properties (it looks like a small bag of holding!), Derrick opens a small pouch containing some dust and blows some dust at Karoshi, as a joke. "Classic Derrick!"
Karoshi, at this point, rises up in the air and seems to be able to fly! Calista once again excitedly thanks them for their help and congratulates them at their decision at choosing the bag of pixie dust as their reward and gathers back the rest of her "treasure". Iwee, with a glare at Derrick, reluctantly returns the purse of holding, and they wonder what the other treasures could have benefitted them. But they will never know, as Derrick "chose" the pixie dust (which seems to have 4 more pinches left in the bag). After about 10 minutes, Karoshi floats gently back to the earth, his brief period of flight seemingly over.
The party return to The Hunter, travelling slowly due to Jaxii's exhaustion, but being aided by following a young rabbit, who Calista asked for help in guiding them back to the Hunter via the quickest route, and then decide to spend the following day with Jaxii being trained in survival and in tracking Lycanthropes. Jaxii is also offered a choice of one of The Hunter's most precious items - a magic cloak or magic bracers. She chooses The Hunter's Cloak. They also share out the silvered weapons that The Hunter offers them.
Two nights and a day later, the group are ready to set off for the ruins of An-Sen in the Marshes. The Hunter has given them some general directions and pointers to find the ruins, though they will still need to use all their skills in traversing the swamp. Oh dear.
As they start their venture into the Fallen Marshes, Iwee initially takes the lead. She spends the first hour or so of travel leaping from bush to tree and trying to use her acrobatics skill to find a suitable path through the swamp for the others to follow. Unfortunately, after about 30 minutes of successfully finding a relatively dry path, she slips on a lichen covered trunk and falls to the ground, prone. From her low position, she spots a slight clearing off to the left, with a couple of cocoon-like objects tangled in some webs in the distance, with a backpack beneath them. The group decide to ignore this and just press on rather than waste time and possibly risk an encounter with spiders!
With Iwee wiping off the slime and muddy swamp water, Jaxii offers to take over the lead for the next hour or so, trying to follow The Hunter's route. She powers through the waters using her athletics and strength to pull through the deeper water and show the rest of the group the best path through the swamp. She manages to lead them for an hour and, other than spotting a completely white skull floating nearby in the waters nearby, the hour passes without incident.
Derrick steps in to lead the next part of the journey, using Owl Pacino to spot the best path through the swamp to the next waypoint indicated by The Hunter. Derrick's familiar does pick out a good path in through the marshes, though he also spots a building that seems to be half-sunk in the waters just off the path. Again, our intrepid "Heroes" decide to ignore this and press on, pleased that they seem to be making good progress.
Karoshi calls upon his survival expertise to navigate the swamp, despite his survival knowledge being worse than many others in the group. This lack of expertise in the skill is probably what causes the whole group to wander into a patch of strange lilac-coloured plants which seem to give off a sickly sweet smell that causes the group to go a little light-headed and giddy. Unfortunately, Derrick suffers damage and has reduced health, whilst the rest just suffer some temporary health reduction. As they all struggle out of the patch of strange plants and retrace their steps a little, they give Karoshi some dirty looks.
Iwee steps in to help her friend and decides to try to read the land and decipher the information that they have picked up so far. Using her Insight ability, she manages to somehow read between the lines of all the subtle clues presented by the swamp and by the efforts so far of the group, and miraculously (rolling a natural 20 and scoring a 28!) manages to find the next Hunter's waypoint, though the party does encounter some heavy and a little painful rains along the way.
Seeing Iwee's success at the almost impossible, Jaxii is confident she can scare the swamp into submission for the next hour. She lets out an intimidating roar to scare away any hostile creatures that may be around. Initially this does indeed sound scary, but trying to keep this up for the full hour took its toll and after only a short time Jaxii's roar lost any intimidating effect that it may have started with. As the group press through some deep water, overgrown with unidentified greenery, they feel some creatures try to latch onto them - they have been attacked by some giant swamp leeches!
Jaxii gets two of these giant leeches attaching to her, whilst both Derrick and Iwee have one biting into each of them. They all realise quite quickly that the initial bites from the leeches, whilst painful, are nothing compared with the amount of blood loss damage that they can do when attached. Jaxii's raging is ineffective against the blood draining, which is unfortunate as she continues to have two attached to her and she feels the health rapidly draining from her. The group manages to kill the leeches attached to Derrick and Iwee before they can do any further blood-draining. This leaves the two attached to Jaxii and one that seems to be swimming around trying to bite Karoshi.
As Jaxii begins to turn very pale, almost fainting in fact, the party gang up on the leeches drinking the Dragonborn blood. Iwee gives Jaxii some well-needed healing, Derrick takes out one of the clinging leeches, and Jaxii manages to take out the other on clinging to her. The final leech manages to grab on to Karoshi, but Iwee quickly mocks it, viciously. Unfortunately she realises too late that an ear-less leech cannot hear her. Derrick manages to dispose of the last leech, carefully (possibly?) aiming to avoid hitting Karoshi's tail.
All four of our "Heroes" need to spend a little time getting out of the waist-deep water and cleaning and binding their open wounds from the leeches before pressing on. Time marches on and daylight starts to fade.
Derrick decides to pray to his God - Derrick - to guide them towards the next waypoint in the swamp. The rest of them groan, but follow him anyway, as he did manage to guide them well previously. Unfortunately the beam of light he leads them towards just seems to lead them into more boggy and muddy depths. They struggle to drag themselves through the thick mud and weeds. Most of them manage to get to the other side, but Jaxii gets caught in some underwater weeds, and the efforts to free herself costs her another level of exhaustion. She is now back at level 2 and once again moving quite slowly through the rest of the swamp.
It is now starting to get dark, and the group's movements are slow. Karoshi decides to take the lead and use his athletics to power through the swamp and lead them through the best route. Conscious of the fading light, he manages to lead them to the next point on The Hunter's route. Derrick spots the body of a halfling leaning against a tree. Rot-grubs? Possibly. Ominous.
With the last of the day's light now almost gone, all faith is placed in Iwee to get them to the ruins before night falls. The bard tries to persuade the group to blindly follow her. Realising that with the failing light, the biggest problem is with the lack of morale in the group, Iwee reads an inspiring story about overcoming adversity and manages to perform the impossible (DC was 28 for persuasion to work. Iwee rolled a 31!), using her inspiriation token in the process, and persuading the group to push through. They made it!
And so we leave our "Heroes", standing at the edge of a large clearing in the swamp, with the ruins of An-Sen only a few hundred yards away. Tired and bedraggled as the darkness of night is now upon them, but grateful that Iwee somehow managed to persuade them through the last leg of the journey.