(Have to add pictures later, sorry all!)
The smoke coming from Throom's burning body churned in the air, shaping into a familiar dark cloud that had been chasing the party from the start. A Tiefling with vitiligo, whose name is Omen, emerges from the dark wisps. The only thing she remembers is being chased through the woods and then suddenly being surrounded by a misfit bunch of survivors.
To make friends with Omen, Dimli pours a geyser from the decanter of endless water and goes flying in the air, spinning about like a helicopter that has lost control. The entire town watches, even stopping their music, to take in the spectacle. Stevik walks over and inquires about Zym’s armor while Bendeg informs the elven leader about the spider lady that was found in the dungeon. Omen, upon hearing about the mine, reveals she had been buried alive. Quinn asked Stevik how the storm began and how often it comes around, in addition to other general prying questions about the way the world works now.
Stevik tells the party that maybe a king’s servant went mad or nature was fed up with humanoids, but no one is truly certain what occurred. He follows up Quinn's questions by clarifying that the clouds don’t go into cracks or crevices, but rather chases down people who are outside or unaware. People who return from being vanished remember feeling cold, as if death itself was wrapping its arms around them. They become recluses, only a hollow shell of what they once were. Stevik was also taken, but because of his experiences in war as a younger man it affected him significantly less. Stevik also mentions that he hasn’t seen a kid since the original cloud came tearing through- likely because they get taken first. Expersia, the capital, is a location where people go and don’t return from. Omen (along with Bendeg, Zym, and Mort) is from Expersia. It’s supposedly a total ghost town.
The party decides to go to the cabins. Omen chooses to sleep in the Love Shack to be away from the dwarf with “3 stooges in 1 body.” After a couple of hours of sleep, Quinn wakes up and his right arm is numb and the veins have blackened. The intrepid pirate immediately jumps to accusing the newcomer and her 'Tiefling stuff'. Zym is awakened and offers to take care of it while he reaches for his sword. Quinn’s arm feels cold, but once he picks up the rapier his arm starts to clear and the darkness inside his veins recedes into the sword.
Dimli dreams of a skirmish amongst a dwarven group and some orcs. Joining in the fray, Dimli fights valiantly with the orcish blades seemingly not phasing him- that is until his best friend's head is crushed in by a warhammer. Dimli cries in his sleep and eventually awakes in a cold sweat.
Mort notices his own face is starting to rot inside the knapsack where he kept the other stolen countenances. He needs to find a way to preserve these faces. With zero hesitation, Mort goes to Stevik’s cabin alone. Scratching beneath the cabin just faintly reaches his ears as his knuckles hover inches away from the thick wooden door that has the Ilexia trademark bloodstains on it. A note on the door says ‘Do not disturb under any circumstances.’ Mort being Mort, he opens the door and peeks inside. He notices the bed is flipped over, the chains that held Frederick are gone, and books from the shelf are scattered everywhere. He can’t open the door all the way, it seemingly having been blocked from within. As he turns to leave, a creature prowls out from behind the now empty bookshelf and instead of turning to get a better look than his peripheral vision allowed, Mort continued to walk back to the cabins. He knocks on the Love Shack’s door a few times until there is an answer, then tells the whole cabin about the monster he only caught a glimpse of.
"Let’s go kill it," Quinn says, still barely on his feet since Mort electrocuted him. Mort also requests Bendeg for help with the rotting face, but due to his exhaustion, he is unable to help. Quinn, Mort, Bendeg, and Dimli go to Stevik’s cabin. They see the door is still left slightly ajar and as they approach, the creature slams the door shut. It is noted that the sign on the door is in Stevik’s handwriting.
At 3am, once everyone finally settled in, the Love Shack occupants hear glass cracking. Omen sees a hand-shaped object reach out of the mirror as the tarp covering it begins to lift. Quinn rips the tarp off the mirror and sees a demented version of himself crawling out. Mirror Quinn has a demented smile that stretches ear to ear and doesn't reach his eyes. Normal Quinn hits the fingers of the Mirror Quinn and they shatter as if they were made of glass. This thing is part of the mirror! Shards splinter from the hand but the creature is still making its way through the glass.
Quinn pulls out his rapier and hits Mirror Quinn. He shattered Mirror Quinn, at least he thinks he did, but now a version of Mirror Zym was coming out.. but Normal Zym slams his war hammer into the mirror and proceeds to pulverize it. There are flashes of light as the mirror is shattered. No reaction by Mirror Quinn or Mirror Zym, not even the slightest hint of a frown as their connection to the real world is fractured. No shards of glass are left on the ground, just a lonely wooden frame.
Quinn explains what happened with the mirror to the occupants of the Dusty Cabin the next morning. Mort, Dimli, Bendeg, and Quinn check to see if Zym is still... well, Zym. Ever the soldier, Zym is working out in full view of everyone else, not really paying them much mind. All of a sudden, he is in Expersia, staring at that same empty home with the set table that he saw before, but this time he senses movement behind him. Turning around, Zym sees someone (who reminds him of a familiar Tiefling) carrying bodies - which include the body of Yarrow - into the castle. He snaps back to reality and continues his pushups after having been frozen in place for a solid minute.
Mort, Dimli, Bendeg, and Quinn are now at the Love Shack. Bendeg checks the tarp for glass. He notices the back of the frame of the mirror has the same symbol that is etched into the back of his hand. As he touches the frame, it begins to glow. Bendeg feels the slightest feeling of trust with Quinn. Bendeg sees a book coming from the frame. He takes the book, opens it, and sees scripture changing as he looks at it. The frame stops glowing. Omen, Mort, and Quinn look at the book and don’t recognize the language as it seems to be a mix of multiple languages.
The party goes to Stevik’s cabin and notices the sign is gone. After a few knocks on the door, Stevik answers, and they ask him where the sign went. He says he always puts a sign up to 'deter break ins'. Mort asks if it works to keep burglars away, which Stevik just shakes his head.
Bendeg asks to look around inside the cabin and sees the house is in order, not even a hint of last nights transgretions. Stevik was the last person to disappear a few months ago. Mort asks him where he went and why he went out alone. Stevik went to Baldrick’s house because he had received a letter by raven notifying him that the caravan was coming in, so he let Baldrick know because he’s the one who plots the route. Mort asks Stevik if he has anyhing to help with his rotting faces. Stevik opens a giant book with pinned insects, throws them out, and puts the face into the book so it is preserved like a pressed flower.
Bendeg notices that the house, despite being properly arranged, does appears hastily put back together. He asks Stevik about the book found in the frame and the languages inside - can he read them? Stevik says no because the languages change, same as everyone else. Stevik takes a drink from a tree-blood vial.
Mort goes outside to get air. He sees someone, an elven woman, peeking out from behind the Dusty Cabin. Elf woman whispers and waves Mort over to her. She asks Mort to bring his short, unarmored friend. Mort asks why, then questions if it was about Stevik, and finally he offers to bring Dimli to her. The elf is a thin woman with brown hair in a pixie cut named Aleafa. She asks Dimli to hand a letter to the leader of Darkwater before walking into the woods and not providing any additional information. Dimli opens the letter and holds it to the sun, it appears to be blank with no words. Mort asks to see it and uses shavings to sprinkle on it. Nothing happens. Mort feels power coming off the paper, similar to that of his imbued items.
Bendeg takes a short jaunt around town and he notices a symbol on the door of the last cabin on the outskirts of town. He cautiously goes inside the door and notices small footprints that lead to a cloth in the corner. The house is covered floor to ceiling in dust. Bendeg doesn’t find anything but does note that the floorboards creak more than usual.
Zym approaches Quinn as he is training and suggests leaving with the caravan. Bendeg shows the party a sketch of the marking he saw on the cabin. Mort recognizes it as a symbol on the back of the elf’s cloak before she disappeared into the trees. Dimli reveals to the party that he and Mort were approached by an elf and given a letter to take to the leader of Darkwater.
The party goes with Bendeg to the cabin he stumbled across and sees the same things he saw. Bendeg can read the letter from Aleafa as the traces of magic spell out the elvish words. It says the town is fully infested and recommends extermination and that the writer is abandoning the post and going to Flux outpost.
Quinn finds a burnt slip of paper in the abandoned bedding, then lifts the floorboard and finds a dagger with liquid sloshing in it - identical to the dagger Mort took in the dungeon. Mort tells Bendeg the marking on the door was on the elf’s cloaks. As the party talks in the cabin, they hear hooves and a bunch of horses approaching.
With the carts approaching, they remain in the cabin. Dimli jumps to look through the window, but it is dirty. Mort rubs a clean circle for Dimli to peek through, letting the little dwarf feel like he is part of the party. There is a caravan with 3 carts, 6 horses, 6 men in full plate mail, and a centaur leading the way. Dimli asks the group that if a centaur has 6 appendages does that make it an insect. The general response is 'What the fuck?' The party waits to see what happens.
As the caravan begins to unpack their wares, the townspeople come out. Dimli approaches the centaur, whom is named Chesix, and upon seeing the height of the half-horse half-man chooses to shout to ensure he is heard by the centaur. This is entirely unnecessary as Chesix can hear just fine, as he is only a few feet taller. Dimli tells Chesix that himself and his friends were told by Stevik to leave with the caravan. Chesix doesn’t know who Stevik is, nor does he see any friends of the dwarf. Omen walks over to deliver a much needed rescue for Chesix from Dimli and requests passage to Darkwater. Chesix asks for 10g each for passage and informs Omen that it takes a week to travel.
The rest of the party starts to approach as Dimli asks Chesix about Flux, to which he says it’s inhabited by mostly humans, they buy a lot of weapons and the town has to rebuild every day because it’s plagued by monsters every night. Zym talks Chasix down to allowing the party to ride in the caravan for 6 gold each. Omen only has 5 gold, so Dimli offers her 1 gold in exchange for counting out 6 of his own gold. Dimli walks to cart 1 and starts jumping because he can’t climb into the cart. A guard walks over and lets the tiny wooden stairs down, which only exist on cart 1.
Quinn notices the guards have silver weapons and Chasix has a silver battleaxe. He then tells Chasix that Zym and Dimli are siblings and tries to convince him that Dimli is the leader of the party, but his attempts are unsuccessful. The party begins climbing into the carts. Dimli, Omen, and Zym hang out in cart 1, Bendeg examines cart 2, and Mort shoots the shit with Quinn in cart 3.
Dimli and Omen play dice and notice their cart has apples and alcohol. Mort puts his blue face back on, being a normal fucking humanoid. Once the party realizes that they have a couple hours until it’s time to go, Mort, Zym, and Bendeg go to Stevik’s cabin. Stevik is sitting on his bed with his face in his hands. He mutters that what they’ve been drinking has side effects. They lock themselves in houses so they don’t get hurt. Bendeg asks if there was any way for the town to get out of this predicament. Stevik remains pessimistic. Bendeg relents, admitting he doesn’t have enough faith to heal Stevik and the others. Stevik says if it weren’t for 'the halfling' dying, it wouldn't be as difficult because the halfling could control the beast. Stevik says the music keeps them sane and helped the citizens return to an almost humanoid existence. Mort mentions Stevik might need to save his people from the wrath he may need to inflict on the monster in the mine, throwing a random book as hard as he can and says he needs to get out of here. Bendeg offers to end it for Stebik but Stebik advises him to leave.
Bendeg gestures a guard over and asks him if he’s ever seen a creature like what he had witnessed inside Stevik's cabin, but the guard says he isn't familiar. He does mention that the silver helps with the werewolves they find along the way, implying that maybe that'd be useful. He tells them they lifted the armor and weapons off deceased capital soldiers and that the centaur is bad ass and lived in a cave for 3 years. They tend to lose a few men before Chesix even considers getting involved in a fight. He strung a werewolf up by his intestines and left it hanging in the forest just to prove a point. Chesix walks over and dismisses the guard.
Somehow still yelling, Dimli asks Chesix for beer and he tells him he can have a few bottles. Everyone reloads into the carts and they are now arranged two in a cart. Dimli and Omen remain in the first one, Zym and Bendeg relax in the middle, while Mort and Quinn continue to take up the rear.
As they ride along, Dimli sees a human man sobbing in the middle of the road hitting the ground with a shovel and screaming. The caravan stops and then attempts to go around him.
“Come at me, you motherfuckers!” he shouts. Quinn calls on Zym to deal with it, but Zym says he is on break. Quinn then tells Bendeg to god him out of the way, but Mort grew tired of waiting and jumps out of his cart, picks up the guy’s shovel, moves it off the road and calls to him to come get it but the guy doesn’t move. Mort changes his face and scares the guy in the road. Mort climbs back in and tells Chesix to 'just go' and the caravan simply runs over the guy, his bones sickly snapping as the party moved over him. Just a few paces down the road and around a corner. That's where they see a woman and kid, freshly hung in a tree. The kid looks just like the guy that was just run over.
Omen starts to hear whispers as she is communing with her patron. She hears a deep voice tell her that if she continues on like this she will die.
The caravan stops and guards start eating food with one guy on watch. Chesix tells Quinn to take someone he trusts to go ahead and scout, to ensure the path is clear after the run in with that crazed man. Quinn considers his options before he takes Omen.
Quinn tells Omen, “Chesix hurt my feelings, but luckily I don’t have any feelings." This was in reaction to Chesix implying Quinn was a scoundrel. But then he continues, "Dimli told me all about Tiefling Syndrome.”
After all that drinking, Dimli goes to pee, dropping his pants all the way to the ground. Dimli watches Quinn and Omen walk away but they disappear from sight. They see a bag on the road the same color of the ground. 200 yards from the caravan, a friendship is born. Quinn picks up the bag, it has a metal, smooth cylindrical object with ridges. It’s a telescope and when they look in it, it looks like night, always with a clear view of the sky. Zym goes to sit with the soldiers, who welcome a man of similar mentality. Quinn and Omen come back just as the caravan begins moving, leading Mort to ask them if they saw anything. Dimli finishes his piss and struggles to clamor up the steps onto cart 1.
Quinn tells Mort he found a dirty, big, brown bag and threw it in the woods. Mort shows a tiny elephant he made, to prove he is crafty, before he jumps out of the caravan to go get the bag. Mort begins muttering incantations unfamiliar to Quinn as he turned the bag into a bag of holding but it remains with a snapped strap. Mort puts a barrel of apples in the bag to demonstrate how much it can hold, then takes the apples out of the barrel and puts about 50 apples in his bag.
Chesix stops the caravan and sends 2 guards to check something. There’s a broken cart abandoned on the side of the road. The guards are looking at a lock box, unsure of whether to break in. As soon as one of them touches the lock, it explodes into a black ball and sucks itself in, leaving only the guard’s skeletons. Chesix tells the other guards to take the remaining armor and weapons from the skeletons and continue, leaving the men forgotten.
When we stop, Zym instructs us to set up our camp on the opposite end of the caravan from the guards, just to play it safe. Zym feels something in his head at 3am, for the second time in a row. He’s in the capital and feels scales itching as they cover his body. He hears a woman screaming as she is dragging along behind him. Part of her face is scraping off from being dragged along the ground. Then he wakes back in the clearing to find a guard dead with a cut along his throat, which looks like it came from the claws on Zym’s armor. The guards are down to three. Zym hides the body and is covered in blood, but given how the armor is so stained from the spider encounter, it is still hard to notice. Omen wakes up and notices a guard is missing, but remains tight lipped.
Dimli is sleeping and finds himself walking down a path. He hears laughter, but sees only fog with glimpses of a silhouette until it’s about 20 feet in front of him. Standing there is a young dwarf who looks like him, but slightly off. He waves and runs off laughing.
Mort dreams he is in a black obsidian room with 2 figures: a sitting elephant and woman with only hands. He puts the elephant face on the elephant and the woman’s face on the woman. "Why did he let this happen to me? Why did you take our faces? You would really be ok burning down the town when you, yourself... are a monster?" Mort takes the face back in response. The woman just smiles at him in her awkward twisted way.
There is a huddle on the other side of the camp, then Chasix walks over and tells us the guard we spoke with in town is missing. It's very evident the concern lies with the missing armor and not the man itself.
Bendeg notices his mark begins to burn when Zym steps near him. All of a sudden, an arrow comes out of the woods and hits a cart. A masked man runs out into the road. He reminds Mort of the lady. It charges Chesix, who just throws a battleax and cleaves the guy’s head in two. Just as suddenly as it started, it was over and that allowed the party to hear a mournful song as if the trees are singing to them. The caravan doesn’t stop, if anything they pick up pace. The soldiers are expecting this and march to the beat.
Chesix glances over at the group and offers a weary smile, “The trees offer warnings,” he says. Omen tells him he’d lose less men if he’d listen, but he ignores her.
Zym says the music is unsettling. Quinn sees stairs in the middle of the forest, they look like basement stairs made of cement. The music stops. The stairs have moved to the other side of the road, but now they are made of wood. Zym tells a guard to move. The guard stumbles, but his eyes are white and clouded over. Zym keeps pushing him along until it seems to wear off. The party feels something try to take a hold of their minds, but they all push past it.
Mort picks up 6 stones to make sending stones. He goes cart to cart and hands out all 6 stones. Cart three he hands one to Quinn and one to Dimli. Then in cart two he hand one to Zym and Bendeg. Then when he reaches the first cart he hands one to Omen- but then he realizes that there is only one stone left and he goes to pocket it, but Dimli asks where his is. Mort goes to argue that he already handed Dimli a stone, but realizes he saw Dimli twice. Quinn even saw Dimli get a stone but now Dimli is gone from cart three and Mort has to get a new stone...
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