Chapter 23

Thistletop

October 14

Neiia casts float spells on the group as a precaution, and they rush across the bridge. The bridge collapses beneath them, and Jaysek almost screams in terror. They reach the courtyard where 4 dogs attack them. The group handles the dogs and continues on our way; the goblin’s instructions are slightly off, but with them, they still manage to get to the stairs that go downward. Downstairs in the first room is a blackboard on which a map of Sandpoint is drawn, which Agnarr notices is an attack plan. Ertak successfully interprets the map and observes that it shows demons attacking from below. Ertak also points to some writing that doesn’t mean anything, but Agnas notices that it contains a few letters from the word “sinspawn.” In Ertak’s opinion, the board mainly uses group symbols in relation to the number of troops, and there are also a couple of teams of goblins.

Agnarr opens the door; behind the door is a dark-skinned woman, probably the “black face” described by the goblin. She has an illusionary self spell on, meaning besides herself, there are three extra images of her. Black face immediately throws an explosive acid ball at us. We dodge it and wait for Neiia to throw an explosive fireball to destroy the images. Black face throws a power curse at Kieron, which significantly slows her down. After Neiia has destroyed the images, we rush inside and notice that not a single image has disappeared. Kieron manages to knock one of the images out during the battle, and Ertak one. They struggle for a long time against the black face, who hits the group several times with acid spray. A couple of acid balls are thrown too. Sooner or later, black face decides to flee (although she hasn’t been really hit at all). The woman opens the door and heads deeper into the dungeon. We start to flee; Agnarr falls after 4 steps.

Neiia casts float spells, and the party (except for Agnarr) starts flying across the strait. Neiia leaves three fire gates open below to slow down the enemies, one of which she drops away at about the one-minute mark. Jaysek is shot on the way at the 12-second mark, and he falls into the water and loses consciousness. Kieron starts taking off her armor, and Neiia tries to float Agnarr across. The goblins start shooting at Neiia, and she almost gets hit once, but she manages to dodge and gets Agnarr to shore. Kieron is still taking off her armor, so she “asks” in a very military manner for Neiia to save Jaysek because Neiia is still considerably more likely to succeed at it than anyone else. Neiia tries to go into the water and splashes and gets a bit tired, has to leave right away. Kieron jumps into the water and tries to save Jaysek. This doesn’t seem to succeed immediately, but after some floundering, Kieron finally gets Jaysek to the surface.

Neiia also casts a levitation spell on Jaysek, and after that, Kieron starts pushing Jaysek in front of her, and Neiia herself sits on top of the levitating unconscious Agnarr and starts moving Agnarr forward. Ertak comes behind. The group heads back to the city to rest.

On the way there, they see another group of adventurers coming from the side. In the group is one really big man dressed in full-cover plate armor, another person in chain mail, and a couple of elf-like types. A familiar-looking sword floats in the middle of the individuals. This sword is the Magnimar statue’s sword found from the bugbears.

One of the elves is a forest elf woman in leather armor, and the other, in turn, is dressed completely like a peasant, and is a half-elf. As the group talks with the others, a small female western human with a big sword arrives on the scene. The woman jogs to the others, telling that she has found the herbs she needed to patch up the wound of that chain mail type.

The big man dressed in plate armor notices at this point that he needs to introduce the others and first introduces the last woman who arrived. The woman’s name is Anneli. Next, he introduces the other forest elf woman, whose name is Nadja. The wounded adventurer dressed in chain mail is named Slanat, and the half-elf is named Luvirini. Finally, he introduces himself as Garis.

In addition, he tells that the one who is usually somewhere around here is named Arte. At the same moment, a Duranaki appears next to Kieron, who says to Kieron, “Hi, second cousin.” Kieron and Arte chat for a while, and Luvirini starts talking with Neiia, and he also complains that the information package from their adventurers’ guild that was given to them for their first task was quite inadequate. They had reportedly been sent to investigate the disappearance of cows, and in the end, they had to fight a vampire and its enchanted herd. The vampire had reportedly sent the task to the adventurers’ guild himself because he needed to find himself a good successor before he could leave the village vampire job. (The journal recovered from the vampire is described in the story People:the Village Vampire)