From the journal of Erif Hcrocs:
When I originally joined the freemen, I was filled with a sense of hope and confidence. I felt that joining the freemen was my best shot at trying to achieve my destiny, since being able to travel to a large number of islands would increase the chances of me figuring out what my destiny actually is.
However, In my time spent as a freemen, every single mission has proven to be, for the most part, unenjoyable.
On our first mission, we are told it is better if we keep the thing that we are trying to defeat alive.
For our second mission, we aren't even told to fight anything, (although we did end up fighting things, and that was fun) instead, we had figure out how to deal with Acid Rain! (stupid acid rain)
And now, for our most recent "mission" I was infected with a potentially fatal disease (I got better) and was almost trapped in another dimension, both of which are things I am sure are not congruent with achieving a great destiny.
I'm going to keep working as a freemen, of course, because I still feel it's my best chance at actually achieving my destiny, and where I came from before joining the freemen was worse. But I would really, really, like a contract that says:
"Help! I require a freemen team that contains at least one fire genasi to deal with a (insert monster (that is not immune to fire damage) name here) threat. I would like you to kill all on the (same monster), preferably with fire, and take all of their treasure. If you do this, I will give you a giant chest of gold, and provide you with a cryptic clue that might give Eric Hrocs some idea to what has Destiney is, other then the fact that it involves fire, because everyone already knows that. Sincerely,
(some random name that isn't important)"
Chances are, I will never get a contract that looks like that. However, I can hope to get something close.
Returning to the topic of what has actually been recently happening during my time as a freemen, before we are able to return to freemen headquarters after the conclusion of our acid rain adventure, a group of much more experienced Freemen known as the BannerBrand (out of game note: statistics wise, our party is currently 4th level, while I believe it was said that the BannerBrand were equivalent to 12th level characters) have issued an emergency contract (because apparently veteran freemen members can receive and put out their own contracts). I, for once, did not want to immediately jump from one contact to another, and would have been actually fine with taking a few days off before finding out what other contracts there were to undertake.
But NOPE! Apparently everyone else wants to take part is this mystery contract, which we have no clue what it will be about.
(out of game note: it is fairly important to note that this session, the only other players who were able to make it were Etcher and Rhaugox's players)
We are teleported to the island that the BannerBrand are on. the BannerBrand consist of:
Sana, a human cleric,
Varin, an elf rouge,
Cassilius, a teifling fighter,
Dornum, a half-elf warlock, and
Lodimmia, a halfing wizard.
Once we arrive, it is revealed that they do not actually have a contract for us - they want us to help them with a personal problem. However, they are also willing to pay use a large amount of money to convince us to help, and to not tell anyone that they did not actually have a contract for us.
The problem is that they believe that Lodimmia has contacted the whispers. Since none of us have a clue what that is, so we are informed - the whispers is a kind of sickness of unknown origin, that seemingly affects people at random. the fist stage causes people to hear voices and whispers. this first stage lasts of a few days, after which patients progress to stage two - were they fall into a catatonic state. This stage also will last of a few days after which the infected will just disappeared. No matter how well guarded the infected are, something happens that distracts those guarding them long enough for the infected to disappear without a trace.
So the reason that we are here is to provide extra sets of eyes, so that we can potentially study what happens to those that are infected, and also see if we can prevent her from disappearing. Also, we cannot tell Lodimmia about this, and we cannot return to civilized lands just in case the whispers turns out to be contagious. Oh great, I might start herding voices, become catatonic, and disappear as well. SOUNDS LOVELY.
Over the next few days, a few things are happen:
1. Lodimmia enters stage two the very next day, so we do not have to worry about not telling her. Hooray!
2. Some of use start hearing whispers (including me) but luckily, in the early parts of phase one, healing magic is actually able to get rid of the infection. Hooray!
3. Rhaugox manages to find out some clues about the origins of the sickness: it is being made "below", and someone is making it it for a reason, but the person who is making it isn't the person who thinks they're making it. What I got from it was that was someone is making this, so I can direct my anger and desire to burn things at a specific person, rather than a sickness (because being angry at a person seems like a more intelligent thing to do). Hooray!
(out of game note: Rhaugox obtained this information by contacting Dornum's patron, which was actually some thing Sana told us specifically not to do. the interaction between Rhaugox and the patron was interesting, but Erif has no clue about what specifically happened, so that is why this is an out of game note)
We continue to watch over Lodimmia, and nothing seems to happen - for a while. Then, one night, Rhaugox spots a bulette (out of game note: for this who are not aware: bulettes are a kind of burrowing monster, and as such, are a rare sight in the floating isles, since many of them dig too deep and end up falling into the mists). After reporting this sight to the rest of the party, the BannerBrand decide to go and attempt to capture the bulette, seeing as it is an endangered species, and it might be safer in captivity (personally, I don't see the reason in trying to preserve the bulette species, but the BannerBrand do, so they're going out to do it). Of course, it is when they leave when the bad stuff starts happening.
Lodimmia starts talking to someone, saying that she will come to them, with prompts Rhaugox to tie her up. After that, Lodimmia asks if "you can come to me" at which point, a dimensional rift opens up and a horde of small creepy monster things come bursting out of it.
A fight ensues!
I fight them with fire, Etcher fights them with lightning, and Rhaugox fights them with wolf (as in, he turns into a giant wolf and tears them into tiny pieces).
The creatures are not actually focused on us that much. Instead, they focus on trying to grab Lodimmia, and try to take her back through the portal. However, we stop them from doing so, and kill most of them, which is when a second creature, much larger, uglier, and more powerful than the others, also emerges from the portal. We also see, within the portal, an orange, robed, figure, who appears to be keeping the gate open.
The fight continues, but begins to turn against our favour. The new, larger creature manages to get a hold of Lodimmia, and gets her through the portal, at which point the orange-robed figure begins closing the gate. A race ensues to try and get lodimmia out before the gate clothes and we manage to do it (although the BannerBrand also arrive to help us at the last minute). Hooray!
I don't think that I actually worried about loosing Lodimmia, I feel that getting her back was more of an attempt for me to get back at whoever made this disease, by denying them one victim. It doesn't seem like much, but at least it's a start.
After that, we are finally given our (well-deserved) reward, and I even get to learn a magic trick from Dornum. (they were originally going to give us armour and weapons, but none us really wanted or needed them, so I got to learn a magic power instead!). Then we travel by airship back to Freemen headquarters, and it is BORING. I am okay with a day or two of quiet and rest (especially if the action that I was involved with previously was not particularly fun - for example, acid rain), but any period of time that contains no combat, excitement, of large fires that last longer than a week is a sheer nightmare.
Eventually, we arrive back at freemen headquarters, and decide to do some shopping (since we did just get a bunch of gold, and we have a bunch of money saved up from our previous missions). I by a magic orb which increases my magical power, and Rhaugox and Etcher both purchase armour.
Then, we check the mission board, and find that there is only one currently on it - the one where we are supposed to kill someone's imaginary friend. So the decision is wether or not we want to go on this mission, which will involve a long (and boring) journey, or wait a few days (which will also be boring) for other missions to arrive...
And that's where we ended that session, because it was decided it would be better if more players was around to decide weather or not we wanted to take the only available contract or wait for more options to arrive.
So, with the end of this session, I came upon the realization that there is something secret gaining on, but Erif has no clue about it (either that or he doesn't care), which means I cannot talk about this "in the Journal of Erif Hcrocs".
A thing that Erif did not mention (because he was not aware of it) was that Etcher had, at one point tried to cast detect magic on Lodimmia - and saw nothing. It was not that he saw no magic, but that there was such a lack of magic affecting her that that he went temporarily blind. What makes that interesting is that one of the facts about this setting is that underneath all of the floating islands, there is a mist that absorbs magic, and cannot be effected ay magic in any way (which means that wizards cannot use magic to find out what is underneath the mist).
So obviously, there is something going on underneath the mists, and one or more entities are using "the whispers" for some kind of... secret thing, that I have no idea what it is. And now I really want to find out what it is. Apparently the last few sessions before this one have also contained small reveals of potential things to come, it just happens to be that this is the first time I have noticed it. And all this means is that I am even more exited for this campaign!
That's all for now!
(wow, I am pretty sure this has been my longest blog post yet!)
