Hammer 3, 1489
Dre'zel my love,
In the morning, Dannika was very upset that we had met the chwingas without her and took her color changing lantern back.
We decided to leave our wagon behind at the House of the Morninglord. As we were preparing to leave, one of the slain goblins in the wagon bolted upright and ran into the house. His name was Twig, and he decided to join us. Mishann gave Talyth a scroll of Speak with Dead for returning the items the chwingas took.
We set off for Easthaven and on the road, Soupmeister Steve and I identified a giant crevasse in the middle of the road that they had never seen before despite being familiar with this path. Saritu saw some movement coming from some bushes by the gap to the right of the road, and then a frostbitten Auril-worshipping druid emerged from the brush on the left with the escaped polar bear from the goblin fight. Despite Ambrose’s use of a Charm Animal potion on the polar bear, which only prevented it from attacking him, the beast chased directly after Taimen, who was wearing the hide of its mate. Fortunately, Taiman was too evasive for the massive beast. The druid sent a giant tree to attack us, and it engaged Jojo, Ambrose, and me. Its mighty branches put Jojo once, and it would have been worse if not for Talyth’s healing. Saritu and Steve attacked it at a distance while Taimen and Twig dealt with the polar bear and the animated bushes. Eventually, Ambrose managed to punch the tree to death and fortunately, no one was hurt by its fall. Jojo, Saritu, and I quickly dealt with the druid, and she froze completely at the moment of her death. In my haste, I did a poor job of skinning this polar bear for Taimen but she now wears both furs and Steve was able to harvest 300 pounds of polar bear meat in his Bag of Holding.
When we made it to Easthaven without further incident, we arrived amid a celebratory burning of a red wizard in the town square, who had apparently lured an adventuring party to their death. Upon his return, he was interrogated and confessed to his crimes, though his motives were still unknown. The town cheered as he burned and during the commotion, someone pickpocketed some of Talyth’s gold and her scroll, but Saritu used Detect Magic to track down the culprit and Twig stole back the belongings, plus some extra gold. The thief was a bard named Rinaldo, who conducts "seances" with the White Lady, a spirit said to possess the lake. After we visited the Speaker Danneth Waylen and warned him of Sephek, he informed us that there was a reward in the form of the red wizard's magic items for finding some fishermen who went east and disappeared.
Intent to continue our mission to find Garrett, we stopped at the White Lady Inn for a short rest. On our way out we ran into Torga! She denied any knowledge of Sephek’s murders. Under further scrutiny, she seemed authentically troubled to realize that she could not remember originally meeting, or hiring, Sephek. One of her guards confirmed that she just randomly showed up with him one night and claimed she hired him a few months ago in Targos. She also never remembered paying him. On the ride out of Targos, between Bryn Shander and Easthaven, he turned to her and said "The Frostmaiden called me" and just walked into the wilds to the north of the Eastway and disappeared. Torga also mentioned frequent burglaries in Easthaven, which were atypical because she usually has ‘the lowdown’ on those things. She also identified the amulet we got as chardalyn, which is a powerful material imbued with magic from a Crystal Tower built 100 years ago by a mage who used the mind control magic of the tower and chardalyn to amass an army of "lesser beings". It shattered and is spread across this area in bits and pieces.
We continued our journey to Caer Dineval, where we quickly informed the leadership of Sephek and continued to Caer Konig without incident.
It was early evening when we arrived in Caer Konig and stopped by Frozenfar Expeditions. We spoke to Atenas Swift, the shopkeeper, who remembered Garrett setting out about a week ago with the same party his husband described. He didn't recall anything unusual. Boy was very happy to see Atenas. Also at the shop was Jarthra, a dwarven associate of Garrett and also a guide. We persuaded her to take us up the mountain and back the following morning in exchange for payment in coin and bear meat. We left Boy with Atenas and Jarthra for the night and went to find a room at The Northlook Tavern, where the sister owners say their Northern Light, a multicolor iron lantern had been stolen. They think it's dwarves or some kind of smallfolk based on the footprints. We suspect it is made of chardalyn and was stolen by a duergar. With that, we paid for a room and retired for the night. We plan to set out with her tomorrow morning.
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