Reconnaissance & Intelligence Report 01D To: Captain Justine Lamar, Norwick Scouts From: Salina Datson Date/Time of Operation: 13th Kythorn, Post-Noon Location: South of the Flowering Woods Primary Objective Reconnoiter the area from which Doomguide patrols were ambushed. Locate possible subterranean root system suffering from corruption - possible necromancy at play. Terrain & Route Analysis We journeyed south beyond the Flowering Wood, through thickets and into an ancient subterranean hallow. Threat Assessment Hostile presence encountered: Ambush by goblin forces - arcanists - jolters Several parties of undead - heavily armed & armoured - priests Unseen 3rd party - possibly vampire Ghoul Lord & retinue of undead - possibly Granzt, servant of Ombretta(?) -Goblin ambush defeated -Several formations of undead soldiery destroyed -Ghoul Lord & retinue destroyed -Multiple friendly casualties Intelligence Assessment Following intelligence retrieved from the undead Doomguide attack (ref: Report 01C), we proceeded to the Temple of Kelemvor to retrieve additional details. After further ambushes on Doomguide patrols, we triangulated the probable location of the source of the attacks, south of the Flowering Woods. After dealing with a volatile goblin ambush along the way, on our arrival we found the location deeply compromised by undead enemies. After engaging several groups successfully, we located a subtereanean cavern guarded by some manner of forest spirit in the form of a large ethereal bear. Ambassador Auli'i was able to negotiate passage, and it permitted us entry to the location it was evidently charged with guarding. Delving into the caverns and passages, we briefly encountered an unseen voice which forewarned us about the Ghoul Lord ahead, and provided a 'tip' as to the location of Ombretta Piccolo - the Midden Bazaar was her last known destination. Upon entering the final sanctum, we were as one assailed with memories of the place's past. It was evidently once a place of sacred import to the Druidic circles of the area, a location of ritual and repose for their dead, returning them to the roots of the Rawlinswood. Likely, this very holy import is what drew the Ghoul Lord there, for it was in this chamber we located him and his undead retinue. A terrible battle ensued, with many of us falling to the unholy strength of his hammer. We destroyed him. We destroyed his retinue. We brought his body back to town to be incinerated. We brought our own dead back to be restored to life by the light of the Morninglord. On his person I recovered the following: A strange tome, likely unholy in nature, requires additional study A holy symbol of the Black Hand - destroyed We also retrieved the body of a long dead Druid, which the Ghoul Lord had been in the process of desecrating. We intend to return it to the local druids for proper resanctification and interment.

Previously... the gang found The Artificer and learned her scheme for vengeance against The Divine Soul and the Zhentarim. Not long after, four undead launched an attack on the town---seemingly targeted. Two of the creatures, who were Doom Guides of Kelemvor in life, attacked the companions at the Mirthful Cup fire. Two more entered the scout tower and chased an unprepared Captain Lamar into the catacombs below town hall. On one of the bodies they found a map of the Doom Guides' final orders in life, to seek out the necromancer responsible for the past incident at the lake. Based on the knights' fate, the map may help the party locate the same. The party now has information that the enemy overlooked. How will they choose to use it? ((We'll continue this Saturday, whether to gather intel or dive in head first I'll leave up to you!))

Harmony Ashfoot Status: Alive, possibly hiding behind you right now. Description: With pink skin and red hair, this wild eladrin exudes playful, summery vibes at most times. Which is to say she has the manners of a child on holiday. In social gatherings she's loud, cheerful, and easily distracted, but neither is she shy with her opinions and reprobation. Her visible equipment is a mishmashed collection. Her cloak and armor have been patched many times with fabric of clashing colors and patterns. Her belt holds a quiver of fine arrows, but also a pair of scissors, a coin and ring on a string, the body of an old doll, and other idle treasures. An agile and knowledgeable wood-walker, Harmony is surprisingly quiet when she wants to be. For those who know local lore, her wolf's fang necklace marks membership among the region's elite rangers. Public Knowledge: Harmony operates out of the Rawlinswood near Norwick. She's friends with the scout Sable, though apparently disliked by Sable's other close friend, Lark. Harmony has a low regard for the druids of Quercatha Terr and is seemingly at odds with their methods and philosophy despite sharing a love for the woods. Harmony sees and hears much that happens in the Rawlinswood, and she's known to trade such information. Her rubric for the value of a trade is difficult to guess. She's passed up valuable scrolls but taken a single coin with glee. Thematic Music: Light Flight

Blood Lemons

To: Norwick Redcloaks Command From: Recruit Sebastian Rusk Subject: Goblin and Worg Encounter within the Rawlinswood While conducting operations within the Rawlinswood, I traveled alongside Miv the Archer, Salina the Scout, Auli'i the Fey, and Zora the Adventurer. During our movement through the forest, we encountered multiple goblins accompanied by several worgs. The engagement began as a standard skirmish, though it quickly became stranger than any account I would have believed had I not witnessed it myself. Among the goblins was one acting in the role of a bard or jester. This goblin carried no serious discipline for battle at first and instead began singing loudly, dancing about the battlefield, and repeatedly shaking his backside in our direction in what I can only assume was meant to be some form of intimidation or mockery. I record this truthfully and without exaggeration, though I understand how ridiculous it sounds when written plainly in an official report. Despite the goblins’ attempts at disruption and confusion, the company held formation and defeated all hostile forces encountered in the skirmish. The worgs were particularly aggressive, but coordinated action from the group prevented them from breaking our line. Following the engagement, additional hostile movement and sounds were detected deeper within the Rawlinswood. Signs pointed toward increasing enemy numbers gathering nearby. Given the risk of encirclement and the uncertainty of enemy strength, the group made the decision to conduct a tactical withdrawal back toward safer territory rather than press deeper into the forest. The retreat was completed successfully with no members of the party left behind. Respectfully submitted, Recruit Sebastian Rusk

(Updated his picture with his feathered hat and Aelra's purity seal. How Warhammer, love it. Haha, great idea Kingcreeper!)

Before dawn, Sebastian Rusk's armor was laid upon a plain linen cloth at the foot of a small shrine to Ilmater. The priest washed her hands in salted water and ash, symbolizing pain endured and grief remembered, then touched each piece of the plate with strips of red-dyed cloth knotted three times for duty, endurance, and mercy. No incense was burned; the Ilmateri held that suffering needed no sweetening. He'd agreed, not without question, to allow her to place a blessing on his armor after it had been repaired. She told him honestly that she had been impressed with his actions. His leadership and his resolve, his intervention on behalf of the questionable captive. His handling of the bandits, his leadership. And so she did as she had said and prepared the wax seal and holy script, to be bound and worn as a badge and sigil of Rusk's adherence to the code of duty. The priest heated dark crimson wax in a small iron spoon over a vigil candle. Into the wax she mixed a pinch of grave-earth from a martyr’s cairn from the new Kelemvorite temple and a drop of lamp oil from the Ilmateri shrine. The wax was pressed beneath the gorget and over the breastplate rivets with a bronze seal bearing the Bound Hands. Around it, in careful script painted with ash and oil, she wrote a litany upon a ribbon of blessed vellum only partly visible beneath the pauldrons: “Carry the weight that others may be spared.” The blessing itself was spoken quietly, almost like a confession rather than a triumphal rite: “May your strength remain when comfort fails. May your hands rise only for the burden laid upon them. May no cruelty take root within you, even in righteous battle. Endure, that others need not.” At the rite’s end, the priest bound a narrow red cord around the sword wrist of the gauntlet. It was meant to fray with hardship and blood. Ilmateri tradition held that an unbroken cord after battle was not a sign of divine favor, but proof the wearer had never truly stood where suffering was greatest. The armor, in an otherwise unmolested and polished state, would arrive in time for Sebastian to bear his repaired armor along with Aelra's particular seal of duty into his next task.

Between the maybes, we can likely start Saturday even if we have to weave a few PCs in as we go. So 1 EST it is!

Jhael lends her research talents to Isolde's effort, leading her to Bingo as well in case he's familiar with the prior event. She suggests they try to persuade the mages of the Caldera to assist with this ritual, but more than that, the illusionist shares some of what she's learned from Farian: "If we can calculate the day and hour, we can draw upon the spheres to substitute for the shortage of mages." Meanwhile Aoth follows-up on her last suggestion: she requests a few Far Scouts to scour the land in search of the prophets and flocks of the Second Sun. Cursing herself lightly for having lost track of them during the Whisperwick/Bellos confrontations as she does, she will give them a list of signs to watch for, based on her last few encounters: travelers with a penitent air, humble, not-quite-raving but plainly caught by its zeal. She will attempt to persuade Perom's unit to do the same within Peltarch's walls.

A pale shimmer of moonlight filters in through the window in room L3. Laura's in bed, but wide awake and staring at the ceiling. The small black shape of her familiar Nox is glimpsed near her feet, tucked cozily in between the thick folds of a wooly blanket, yet the flicker of the cat's ears at even the smallest sound betrays that he too is awake. Somewhere far in the canyon below, a wolf's mournful cry is heard, soon echoed by others and with a weary sigh, Laura abandons the pretense of sleep and sits up, lighting a candle by the bedside while Nox anxiously meows and curls up on her lap. She reaches for her glasses, paper and quill, writing around the cat in an awkward yet well practiced manner - placing the sheet ontop of a book resting on some piled up pillows. "I've so much to tell you, Barton, yet either too little time or peace of mind to gather my thoughts and do so. But I also cannot sleep, my thoughts churn relentlessly, tormenting me with the myriad of things I could have, should have, would have done if only I'd been smarter, wiser, quicker and less pathetically useless. I feel sick to my stomach with regret. The sense of failure's so powerful that when Ereda congratulated us on defeating Whisperwick, I wanted to scream. I didn't, though - I didn't have enough left in me for any outburst and besides, she was the wrong recipient thereof. She was genuine in her praise after all - because on paper, it looks like a success. The aetherite's reclaimed and Adan Whisperwick's dead, alongside his many clones and two allies that seemed unlike his usual use them and lose them type. His big project's in ruins, as is his entire rotating cube-form tower, a pocket plane within a pocket plane within... well you get it. It was actually quite amazing. But it ~isn't~ our success. I'm not denying that we worked hard, but there's also no denying that we could never have defeated a mage of his caliber on our own. I've always known that, so why didn't I insist we leave as soon as we had the aetherite? If we had, would things have played out differently? I knew by then that something about that 'George' we met along the way was decidedly off - didn't I? How did he get into the pocket plane without his spellcasting allies aid? Why did I never stop to question that, nor pay more mind to the increasingly disturbing contrasts to the much more thoughtful and considered man I'd met in Moonreach, some months back? Truthfully, did a part of me secretly relish that inhumane confidence, the idea that we had an unexpected and powerful ally in a fight I never believed we could win? Probably. Though I also know that if Jaxon hadn't been separated from us, I'd have been much more likely to return to Moonreach once we had the aetherite. He outsprinted us towards a closing door and from then on, we'd neither seen nor heard him anywhere in the puzzling, shifting cube labyrinthe of the tower. I wasn't going to leave without him, even though at every turn, I expected Whisperwick to swoop in and casually obliterate the lot of us. Especially after we slew his familiar - a large feline with displacer-like traits. I'll be honest - even though it was ten times larger than Nox's panther shape, it still reminded me of him and I couldn't help but to feel rotten, knowing the pain it inflicts. Killing the half-orc warlock and the Thayan noblewoman felt bad too, though I told myself we had no choice but to fight. I'm not sure if that's exactly true. Right now, it feels like another of a series of poor decisions that day, though time may settle my mind into more ease on the matter yet. Right now, everything feels like failure. Because we lead that 'thing' wearing George Longcloak's guise not only to Whisperwick and his machine's untimely end, but to Jaxon's, too. Even unwittingly, we were partners in the crime that saw Jax taken from us - dissolving before our very eyes, into smoke and cinders. I tried to stop it, but 'George' only laughed and commended me on giving my friend clarity in his final moments! I acted too late, chose the wrong spell, it was all in vain. I'm -so- useless, Barton. When Nerrez broke down thereafter, running wild in his lycan shape, I couldn't help him either. I just stood there, frozen in defeat. It's one thing that I couldn't show Whisperwick my best self - my magic was mostly depleted by the time we got to the pinnacle and to my great shame I had to resort to a Lesser Dispel against an archmage's inpenetrable barriers. I knew it wasn't going to work, but at least I tried something with a theoretical chance of effect. But when that lying flame creature took Jaxon, 'used' him to patch the holes Whisperwick's magic had torn into his essence, I felt helpless, felt like a child again. I wonder, writing this, if I wore the same look on my face as I did when you ushered me from our home, a lifetime ago, in Waterdeep. I don't remember much about that night. Only the feeling - helpless, afraid and faced with a loss too immense for words. We learned the truth too late - Whisperwick's motives behind everything, likely for years, was to trap, neutralize and harness the energy of a malign, fiery 'star' of sorts - capable of infecting the minds of mortals, using them as agents. As it had with this George Longcloak, before Whisperwick split his soul apart in an attempt to rid it of the parasite. The result, horrifically, is that the infected part survived, in turn usurping half of the soul fragments, while the real George Longcloak reclaimed the other half. And Jaxon? I don't believe he's rightfully part of either - and even if he once 'was', the relationships he's forged, the independant, pivotal choices he's made and the impact he's had on the world, they all fit the defining characteristics of a soul proper. At least in so far as there's any real consensus of what a soul 'is' - which there isn't. And that vagueness of definition is telling - that means, to me, that a soul is something that's alive, that's fluid and malleable, that develops through these very relations and choices. For as long as I've known him, 2-0-6 strove to find his own identity, to rebuild himself from the ashes after Zhentarim captivity. He became Jaxon through the bonds of friendship we all forged with him (even if Nerrez still tries on other names). Surely, I insist and tell myself over and over, that's enough to rise from anew. There's also a small ember remaining - Nerrez' swift hands grabbed it, I found out afterwards, and Farian's ensured there's hair and scraps of tissue enough for a ressurrection, if we can but extract the soul via a modified Soul Jar. Assuming it qualifies as a soul - but it must! It should. Shouldn't it? My mind's eye is drawn back to a late summer's day in Peltarch - that strangely carefree day Jax and I spent together, in clothes unlike our own, roaming the city market, stores and cafés. I wrote about it before, didn't I? That I felt like I could've been someone else, that day - another me, from a parallell lifetime in which our family were 'not' branded traitors, or perhaps just a clerk on her day off, chatting happily with.... well that's just it, isn't it? He, too, seemed to entertain similar flights of fancy. In those new clothes, with that tentative smile, was he not in a way taking a glimpse at another self; trying out what could have been or might become? I think anyone who knows what it's like to be broken also learns how to rebuild themselves - that they'll be better at this than those who take wholeness for granted. Jax chose to become who he is - he chose more consciously than most. That strong self-awareness gives me hope, at least theoretically, when it comes to extracting him from the rest. Though it doesn't change the fact that we're facing a burning, blistering star, threatening to consume us all unless stopped. And I haven't the faintest idea how to do that. The bitter irony is that the one who knew is dead by our hand - and so here I am, at risk of returning to the loop of regrets all over again. If you've read this far, brother dearest, I applaud you. I had to stick these churning thoughts onto paper for my own sanity's sake if nothing else. Here's hoping my brain will finally shut up and let me sleep. Your dearly depleted sister, Laura"