Party Members: Liliana, Aramis Darkmoor, Danith, Uwil, Dalgatha]]
The party undertook a trek to the Red Hand Rock to rescue captives and retrieve a valuable statue from the wrecked ship there. We bought a cart and borrowed an ox from a local farmer, hoping that this would help us to get the statue back to Fort Talmadge and not just be an utter nuisance on trail…
The first section of coast road was not too bad. The first thing of note we encountered was a savaged kobold corpse in the road. We took a few potentially useful items (why not when you have a cart?), and proceeded on our way. The second thing of note was a bit more of a problem: a spiked pit trap in the road, complete with rotting dead animal in it. Danith jumped down for a closer look, and let us know that the beast had been a badger, once. While he was down there he pulled up some of the spikes, which we thought might come in useful, while the rest of us cleared a path around the pit for our cart to take.
Maneuvering the cart over the rough road was tiresome work, so we made camp early that night. During the night we were attacked by three orcs and a dog, which Aramis enchanted and is trying to tame and train. (We slew the orcs, of course. Those aren’t remotely trainable.) As we rested during the next day, another of the badger creatures found and attacked the camp. I think it was probably attracted by the rank scent of the dog. We killed it relatively easily and Aramis skinned and butchered it nicely. The pelt would have brought a nice sum of gold if we’d managed to keep it.
The next day as we were passing by an old quarry, we discovered it to be inhabited by kobolds. They were small and lazy, and we came to an agreement that we could pass by, as we were brave badger hunters and orc slayers, and had no interest in disturbing them. Unfortunately Aramis’ adopted hound was not under his control as he claimed. The beast was raised to kill kobolds, and that is what it tried to do as we began to cross in front of the quarry.
We were able to appease the lizardmen, one of whom was badly shaken but not seriously harmed, with an offering of all the armor we had stripped from the orcs we slew, in addition to the badger pelt and meat. They still would not allow us to pass, but only let us retreat up the trail, where we set up camp again and tried to come up with a new plan of attack.
