AAR: [1st] River Access (2020-02-14@21:00 GMT)

[Montaugh]

My name is William Carver, I am a second circle Scout Adept.

We were hired to find a way to access the Serpent River. I once again found myself in the company of Zil the Windling Elementalist, Vlolkir Troll Skyraider, and Xeviouz the warrior. We had a new travel companion this time a Troll named Norg, He was a Gauntlet. This is my first encounter with a Gauntlet, to be honest I felt a bit bad for him. He seems like a warrior similar to Xeviouz, but I don't think he could afford a shield nor a weapon. He ended up attacking things with his hands, I was going to offer him a weapon a weapon, but I did not wish to be insulting as I know those starting out can be a little hurt about their lack of funds for even the most basic of supplies. Also he really didn't need a weapon and Norg proved himself to be quite the fighter.

We split up into our roles, I found myself once more in the pathfinder role. I quite like working with the maps and the nice thing about behind a Scout is that I can fill any of the roles. Zil was our scout not to be confused with a Scout, perhaps we need a new term. He was responsible for being alert to the enemies that could stumble upon us. The rest were the quartermasters and decided how to do the supplies and made the meals. I do find the pathfinder role is making me a little lazy. Every few hours all I need to do it take 10 or so minutes look at the sky, look at the charts, read them correctly and point in the direction we want to go and say "That way." It really doesn't need my full attention for the entire day. I don't need to be hyper alert, so that we don't wander into somewhere dangerous, nor do I need to be on the look out for some food, water or places to set up camp. That isn't saying that I'm not doing those things, just that they are not the focus of what I'm doing throughout the day. I should spend more time focusing on those aspects of our travels I suppose. Perhaps I will try to do two roles next time, focus on a main task like scout and doing the path finding as needed. Navigation is after all something that is simply ingrained into being a Scout adept.

That is enough on my thoughts for the moment though. Onward with the adventure, I know that is the most enjoyable part of these journals after all.

Our first encounter happened with some Tundra Elk. They were stampeding. I suggested that we climb some trees to escape them, but the little bastards had other things in mind. They wanted to do us harm and trample us. Perhaps we were in their territory, and they did seem a little smaller than normal, though speaking from personal experience I can say that their antlers hurt, after one poked me with on I decided that it was in my best interest to scramble up and out of the way. Zil.. he got to cheat and simply flew up out of their reach. Once I got up into the tree I started attacking hoping to distract them. Great Leap would have been most useful here to be honest, it took time to climb the tree. I think I need to learn to Great Leap and perhaps avoid blows better. Xeviouz had a hard time getting up a tree and was quickly being surrounded. Eventually we all made it up into the trees though and after some time the Tundra Elk left us alone.

Finally we reached our destination at 38.06. At the river we found a small fishing settlement. The ones inside were naturally cautious with us. We performed the greeting ritual. The others did not have an issue, I carved an elk out of wood. They did not let me into the settlement. I wasn't offended and I understood, I had failed the ritual greeting in their assessment.

I admit it wasn't my best work, but I thought it looked like an elk. I have brought it to ask additional opinions. One of your librarians started laughing and told me it looked like a potato with legs, he then stopped laughing after a moment and told me to carve another one to prove to him that I wasn't marked. I mean I did that just to get back into Throal, but I humored him and took my time to carve another one. This one was passable this time. He left off laughing and I saw him talking to another librarian who also started laughing. Perhaps I shouldn't have shown my failure after all, nor put that in this journal for all of future generations to know. I am only human though and I think our failures are important for someone to know as our success are. It also means that I need to practice my artistic skill more and put more devotion into it. Back to the rest of what happened though.

As I was left outside there wasn't much for me to report on the next part and what happened inside the town I can not directly report on, saying what I was told happening isn't my experience of what happened. So, I spent the time looking around outside for some alchemic ingredients, but I found nothing much of use.

The next morning we left the village and went looking for some large crows that were acting strangely. Perhaps doing this would prove my heart to those in the Settlement. It didn't take long to find these creatures and I used my creature analysis on them and learned that they were called Blood Ravens. Not all that dangerous in small groups, but in flocks they can be quite dangerous and there was a decent sized flock of blood ravens here. I did learn that we could clip their wings, which was a nice thing to learn about the blood ravens. The battle was going well and quickly became one-sided with us on the winning side. At first I was using my newly purchased mace ,but decided to move onto my short bow after a short while.

A quick sidenote...I am still torn between using a shortbow and a sling to be honest. I like both, but I keep getting drawn to the sling and I feel not wrong but bad about using the bow. I know using the shortbow offers better damage, and range. The same can be said for the longbows though or the crossbows. Something about using the sling though just feels right to me, if that makes sense. I need to spend more time on these feelings. They could be intrinsic to how I see the world after all, that and rocks are everywhere. I mean its not like I will run out of rocks to use as ammo. I can also see myself carving those rocks into beautiful patterns like if they were wood. Maybe I'm growing and expanding my views and my feelings are telling me something that I am not fully ready to accept or understand about myself yet. Sorry for the side note, but I find these moments when I'm writing let me understand myself better if I just let the thoughts flow across the paper as I write my reports.

After we had killed a few of the blood ravens they started to flee but I tracked them down, and it was here that the real battle began.

That was when we were beset upon by a nethermancer who was upset that we attacked his flock of blood ravens. So we began to engage him. It was a hard fought battle, but eventually we took him down. Ok, so it wasn't all that hard of a battle, honestly i think the Tundra Elk were more dangerous to us. We took him prisoner and I back tracked his trail to a cavern that he was using as a lair. Even though he was bound and hobbled he managed to call darkness down upon us and made his escape.

We gathered up what we could and made our way back to the settlement and then back to Throal.

So ended the adventure of The River Access.

William Carver
Human Scout, Circle Two.

[sigfriedmcwild]

From "Notes on the world outside the kaers" as penned by Norg

My first foray outside Throal was at the behest of a group of merchants wanting to open a trade route to the Serpent River. The other adepts taking on this task were Vlolkir, a troll Skyraider, William Carver, a human Scout, Xeviouz, a human Warrior, and Zil, a windling Elementalist. They all had been outside several times and worked together before, so I let others take the lead and focused on keeping us fed.

The outside was interesting, the endless expanse of the sky above is definitely a change and the bright light of the sun makes even the largest light crystal inside Throal but a dim candle. I am significantly less impressed by things like wind and rain however, but I digress. Every day brought up some new discovery for me, but from the reactions of my companions I think it was largely uneventful.

The first notable encounter was on the 4th day, when we ran into a herd of animals that William identified as Tundra Elk, he also commented on them having smaller antlers than usual, so maybe they were juveniles. Whatever their age, they were quite aggressive, we noticed them when Zil shouted a warning as they started stampeding towards us, later discussion suggests we may have inadvertently entered their territory.

On the subject of the elks themselves, they are quite tough (one took two good punches to the head without going down) and they put their antlers to good use, one is unlikely to be dangerous to a well armoured warrior, but a group could definitely cause trouble, especially to civilians.

After about 10 days, we reached the river and found a fishing village named Sosanopa. We performed the customary greeting rituals and were allowed inside, with the exception of William who carved some kind of potato. The village representatives were a young human who carved an unremarkable fish head, and an elderly dwarf who performed several songs about the life of a fishing village, quite touching actually.

We met the village headman who gave us a tour and answered our questions, they've come out of their kaer a few months ago and have been building since. They focused on defence first erecting a solid palisade and preparing watchposts, and then moving onto housing. They are still working on that part with most of the village living in temporary shacks, but they seemed quite happy to just be outside. The population seems to be mostly dwarves and humans, and they apparently had no trolls as Vlolkir and I attracted quite a lot of attention.

When asked if they would be open to the development of a trade route from Throal, they seemed quite interested, and being able to take advantage of an already established location would greatly ease the work. Or at least that is my uninformed opinion.

They asked us if we could help them with some large ravens that had taken over a nearby hill, and of course we accepted. The next day we went to investigate, and easily found the ravens which William identified them as Blood Ravens. Despite their numbers we easily handled them, a couple tired to escape but William managed to track them with some Scout magic. As we chased the escapees down, a dwarf showed up further up the hill, and started ranting about how we were invading his hill and killing his ravens. I pointed out that if he wanted people to not disturb him, maybe he should put some signs around the land he claims, his response was not really coherent and then he turned his face into a skull. Zil seems to think this is a normal thing for Nethermancers to do.

I'm not sure exactly what happened next, but Vlolkir was charging the dwarf, the dwarf shot a spear of magic at Vlolkir, and then it was time for punching rather than asking questions. I followed Vlolkir, while the others dealt with some more Blood Ravens.

Much like the Elk, the Blood Ravens only seem to be a threat in large groups, unlike the Elk they don't seem to be too tough. I punched one and must have cracked most of the bones in its body with that one hit. The Nethermancer, like most magicians didn't seem to have the constitution for a proper melee, but his skull visage was definitely unsettling and distracting. He also seemed to be preternaturally good at dodging.

Once we had the dwarf subdued, WIlliam took us to the cave he used as shelter. Just as Zil and I walked inside to investigate, the Nethermancer managed to cast some form of darkness spell and escape from Vlolkir's grip in the confusion. We returned to Sosanopa to report, they do not seem to know of the Nethermancer, hopefully the man learnt is lesson and won't trouble them again.

[ottdmk]

The Great Library of Throal thanks Zil, William Carver, Norg, Vlolkir, and Xeviouz for their contributions. +10 LP, +37.5 Silver.