After sharing a few ales with Artemis and the gang, Sairina gathers quite a small following, all eager to know of what happened on the Fizzbang quest, especially considering the group returned home empty-handed. "Did you find them?" "Are they all dead?" "Do we need to mount another rescue mission??" Sairina, quite embarrassed at her failure, and mildly intoxicated tries to avoid the questions. Eventually, she realizes that no one will let it be unless she satisfies their questions with appropriate answers. Let's see... how can I spin this?
We've come back to Hope to regroup and mount another rescue mission. Unfortunately, we weren't adequately prepared for the mission, nor the creatures we encountered in this area of the swamp. Our plan is to head out again soon, better prepared with experienced warriors and horses due to the immense distance. Sairina brushes her hair out of her eyes and shifts uncomfortably in her seat. I know this is difficult, what with the arrival of the dragon, and our missing companions. It is my hope that I can both rescue these unfortunate adventurers AND help to slay the evil red dragon, but we must organize parties for both. If they both overlap and I need to bow out of one, so be it. But while we're here, let me fill you in on what we encountered while on the rescue mission. As we headed out on the mission, the fog was especially bad. I know many of you have also encountered this fog, which makes it very difficult to navigate the terrain. Somehow we actually ended up back on the road! We were about 12 miles West of Hope on the Road and then continued North. The rescue group consisted of myself, Artemis , Seonbi, Sabrina, Fergal, Furious, and a newcomer Knock . Our first day was actually very uneventful despite getting lost. We had a fantastic feast of frog and cattails provided by our wonderful chef Furious and settled in for a nice sleep. On my watch duty with Sabrina the sorcerer, ( Sairina rolls her eyes) a few goblins with giant rats as pets stumbled on our camp. While I know there's a goblin bounty out, I couldn't bring myself to kill them, especially since they were doing nothing wrong, just hunting for mushrooms. We let them leave in peace. The next day we headed 12 miles North. Here we spotted a circle of standing stones covered in moss, about 6 miles to the West of where we were. As much as we wanted to go and explore them, it was too far out of the way for us to travel, especially with the rescue in progress. I encourage another group to investigate though. They look to be very ancient. Soon after this, we were attacked by a few GIANT frogs and a few smaller cat-sized frogs that were bright red in color, along with swarms of regular-sized frogs. Immediately the swarm of frogs covered me, but they were quite easy to brush off. However, one of the large frogs attempted to eat Fergal! The worst part of this combat was definitely the small red frogs. When you hit them they EXPLODE burning everyone within 10 feet on all sides! Not only that but it almost seems like they have a death wish, and were constantly getting as close to as many of us as possible. At one point the sorceress Sabrina killed a frog I was trying to get us all way from. This set off a chain reaction of exploding frogs that left most of us injured. While we were trying to kill them without dying ourselves, Artemis was completely covered in the small swarm of frogs. They got inside his armor, and to be honest, it looked as if he was dead... until there was a flash of light and suddenly he was conscious again. I'm not sure what happened, but obviously, his god doesn't want him dead just yet... Thankfully, none of us died and we were free to continue forward.
The group of us kept heading North until we ran into the ruined keep a few of you have mentioned. The slaver elves didn't seem to be there, but with a rescue mission at hand, we didn't have time to investigate, so we headed North/Northwest to Goliath Falls. Goliath Falls was absolutely beautiful, with glowing fungus at night. However, while I was doing my nightly meditation, two giant trolls appeared and tried to take Sabrina as a midnight snack! I burst out of the tent, and did my best with my sword, despite not wearing any armor. We eventually cut one down while I kept the other busy by dodging all his attacks. But right as we thought the battle was in hand, the DEAD troll suddenly woke up and started attacking again!! At this moment, I was a bit distracted and the other troll knocked me upside the head to the point I could barely stand, he also knocked out Artemis too. At this point, I knew I had to save Artemis , so I kicked fire in the troll's face and dragged Artemis away. I stabilized him but had no potions or anything to heal him, so I had to leave his body hidden behind a tent. When I ran back into the fray, the still-alive troll realized he was absolutely fucked, and ran off, while we set to work on hacking the head off the other one so he couldn't wake up. Seonbi said something about how acid might've killed them? Fire sure didn't do the trick, and even as we left the campsite in the morning the Troll's head had already started to grow back!
It was here we had to make a tough decision. We weren't even at the rescue site yet, and most of us were near death's door. While I still wanted to continue on, I decided to leave it up to those who had friends who were missing, like Seonbi and Artemis . Eventually, we decided to head back and re-group. So for those of you who are interested in the rescue mission, we will be trying again soon! However, we are requiring that everyone have some sort of a mount so we can get there quickly. The travel time to get to this location is a hindrance, but with horses or similar mounts I believe we can get there with enough stamina to rescue our friends and all make it back alive. Who's with me?!
Sairina throws her fist into the air as she shouts with an inspiring tone.
