The Waalder Forest
All the plants are going to to try to kill us. Oh, wait, that’s the crater in the north of Plynck. Not here. Never mind.
All the monsters are going to try to kill us.
The miasma is going to try to kill us.
Yay us.!
Summarized plan:
(1) Get to the forest.
(2) Find and disable the miasma device
(3) Deal with the glyph
(4) Fight all the monsters and plants
(5) A Miracle happens
(6) We win!
We fly 36 miles and camp.
Pail 6,
5043
Cast Mass Fly – 12 hours
Overcast and a strong wind from the west.
Pail 7, 5043
Clear and calm today.
We fly and fly toward a mountain and look for a river that looks like a “W”. We find a river that looks like a “M”. We fly some more looking for a desert. Stop and make camp.
Pail 8, 5043
Calm but overcast.
Fly and fly looking for a desert. Can’t see one. Make camp
Pail 9, 5043
Clear and calm.
Fly up and see a desert. Still many miles away. We fly and fly. Make camp
Pail 10, 5043
Desert is roughly 175 miles across. We fly in ‘til it feels like we are flying out. Make camp.
We fly up high to locate lakes – Beari has the best ideas!
Pail 11, 5043
High winds, pouring rain, low visibility. We spend the day in the shelter.
Pail 12, 5043
Clear and bright stars (still dark).
We fly up before dawn and wait to see which lake is reflected. 4 party members + 4 lakes to watch = 1 lake / party member.
We are surprised by 8 giant bats. They are person-sized.
Surprise Round
B1 & B2 miss Arden
B3 & B4 miss Zora
B5 & B6 miss Ben
B7 & B8 miss Beari
Round 1
Beari casts Magic Missile on B8 for 21.
Ben casts Soundburst on B5 & B6 for 5, also stuns them and they start falling; moves to flank B7 and hits B7 for 17.
Arden moves to flank B3 with Zora; hits B2 for 14 then 12.
Zora hits B3 for crit – makes bat sushi; cleave B4 for cirt – makes more bat sushi; cleaves B1 for 34.
B1 misses Zora
B5 and B6 fall
B7 & B8 miss Beari.
Round 2
Beari casts Magic Missile on B8, kills; checks for sunrise – not yet.
Ben hits B7 for 11, 16, kills.
Arden on lookout for dawn and/or more bats
Zora hits B1 for cirt, makes even more bat sushi. Bat sushi is gross! Why does she keep making mor? Maybe it was a delicacy in her homeland? No accounting for taste, I guess.
0 XP (bats are too minor)
We get set to watch lakes and wait for dawn. Sun comes up – lake to the SE is the one we need to go to. We fly and fly and then make camp.
Pail 13, 5043
Clear and calm
We look for the forest near the lake. 14 miles to the lake; 25 miles to the center of the lake. 12,000 ft up we see forest 200 miles to the south.
Fly and fly and make camp.
Pail 14, 5043
Our Plan:
It involves flying, spotting, fighting, and spells. It is a good plan… I wish I knew more about it.
There will be monsters and automay and miasma and an angry and powerful wizard. Oh, and don’t forget the warlike vegetation (even if those plants aren’t here).
(1) Fly over & try to see machine or find the center and work way out or look for devastation.
(2) Fight monsters and don’t stay in the miasma too long.
(3) Summon elementals to fight the automaton.
(4) Go inside machine and keep fighting.
(5) Stop the machine.
(6) Fight the wizard.
We fly to the forest and look down. We see the miasma and nothing else. Looks like a big black ink blot. There is nothing to see from above or around the sides. There are water courses we could follow in and out.
From the middle of the forest we slowly spiral out flying close to the top of the miasma and stopping to listen for sounds every mile or so. Zora and Arden do listening, Beari and Ben are on guard duty. We hear and see nothing. Fly out and make camp, Safe overnight.
Pail 15, 5043
Fly in – make checks in a circle two Mass Fly castings around – fly out – make camp.
Pail 16 - 18, 5043
Repeat Pail 15 in different quadrants of the forest. We hear nothing.
Pail 19, 5043
We choose a stream into the miasma, flying low, looking for signs of machines, listening. We can see 30’ in each direction through the miasma. We find one clearing.
We find a Purple Worm.
Init: Zora, Beari, Arden, Ben, Worm
Sting, bite cut your way out, high spell resistance, tremor sense (hard to hide), has reach – lots of reach.
Beari had a mauve worm as a pet in high school.
Round 1
Zora hits PW for 40, crits for 170.
Beari casts a Fireball for 18.
Arden hits PW for 65, 42, kills.
48 XP
We’ve been in for an hour: -1 to all stats and rolls.
We find the source of the stream.
The miasma is taller than the treetops.
We fly up and out before hour two.
Miasma recovery – 1 point / watch; Lesser Restoration: fix stats; Greater Restoration: fix all
Pail 20 – Dragon 12, 5043
We spend days exploring the miasma from above and below trying to find signs of the machine and resting inside the rope trick.
[Zora says the gods have forsaken us all.]
Dragon 13, 5043
We see something? It is a Corpse Gatherer and it wants extra delicious corpses. All it wants to do is eat your corpse. It’s not unreasonable; it’s going to kill you first. It is yucky! -- We hates it.
Round 1:
Beari casts Sunburst for 77 hp
Ben attempts to Turn it – fails; attempts to Turn it – fails.
Arden tumbles past CG to flank it; hits CG for 15.
Zora charges for 34; hits for 32.
CG attacks Arden and three times he is concealed; attacks Zora and twice she is concealed and once it misses.
Round 2:
Beari casts Mordenkainen’s Sword (MKS) for 22
Ben casts Flame Strike but fails to beat Spell Resistance; casts Flame Strike and again fails to beat Spell Resistance
Arden hits for 15, 15, 18, 14
Zora hits and kills
[[Corpse Gatherer dissolves into 29 Zombies]]
Zora cleaves Z17 for 58; hits Z17 for 54 and kills; cleaves Z18 for 54; hits Z18 for 57 and kills; cleaves Z7 for 60 and kills; cleaves Z19 for 54; hits Z19 for 59 and kills; cleaves Z20 for 59 and kills; cleaves Z21 for 62 and kills; takes a 5’ step and cleaves Z25 for (!shock!) miss; hits Z25 for 60 and kills; cleaves Z8 for 62 and kills; cleaves Z9 for 60 and kills; runs out of targets.
Zombies miss everyone.
Round 3:
Beari hits Z11 for 17 with MKS
Ben attempts to Turn, succeeds in dusting eight Zombies; moves to a second group and again attempts to Turn, succeeds in dusting eight more Zombies
Arden tumbles, stabs Z11 for 12
Zora moves to Z1, hits for 59 and kills; cleaves Z23 for 55; hits Z23 for 61 and kills; cleaves Z29 for 58; hits Z29 for lots and kills
Z11 tries to hit Arden but misses
Round 4:
Beari pokes Z11 for 18 with MKS
Ben moves to Z11, hits for 17 and kills
We win! Yay! But, gross. We move where we were going to camp to somewhere upwind.
XP 572
Dragon 14 - 16, 5043
We reach the mouth of the river we have been flying along – in the sense that it flows out of the miasma. We fly along the perimeter and find another good candidate stream to follow: we will be going upstream, so there is no guarantee that it will flow all the way through the forest. We will start up it tomorrow.
As we are about to make camp:
Surprise round:
Icky stuff appears – they are Specters and, what luck! there is one for each of us.
Init: Zora, Arden, Beari, Ben
S1 misses Ben
S2 hits Beari for 3 & -2 levels
S3 misses Zora
S4 misses Arden
Zora hits S3 for 38
Arden tumbles to the other side of S4
Round 1:
S1 misses Ben
S2 hits Beari for 1 & -2 levels
S3 misses Zora
S4 misses Arden
Zora hits S3 for 44 and kills; cleaves S4 for 52; hits S4 for 48 and kills; hits S2 for 43
Arden hits S1 for 16, 10, 17
More undead appear, they look like trees, they are Night Walkers
NW1 attacks Zora but misses
NW2 attacks Ben and hits for 50; casts Cloud Kill: Arden, Ben, and Zora save but Beari is poisoned for 5
Beari flies up and out; casts Sunburst on NW1 for 70, on NW2 destroys – he was delicious
Ben attempts to Turn: dusts the two remaining Specters but has no effect on NW1; casts Searing Light on NW1 for 53
Round 2:
Zora hits NW1 for 59, miss, miss, miss, 51 and kills
XP 286
Beari asks Ben for help. Ben casts Neutralize Poison and Greater Restoration on Beari; Cure Serious on himself.
All other damage will be healed overnight.
We again change where we make camp.
END OF RUN
