This week, the party took some time cleaning up after the fight and getting some more information from Brother Michael, a priest of Davyd (Dahh-vid), who was a powerful priest/cleric (of healing) in the region about 60 years back. (Kathleen-- the religion of this place is pretty interesting, and I can send some text on that if you want it.) The party heard that Davyd likely left a temple for the town's benefit somewhere out in the same woods that the spring was rumored to be in. They circled the small forest, and followed a creek into the woods until they hit a spring. There was a dead wolf there; whether it was dead of the disease while visiting this watering hole, or that this was a poisoned spring was unclear. They took some water and wandered further in.Not that much later, they came across a wounded elf, howling like the 'white wolf'. They found out that he ("Shyleen") rode the wolf (blink dog) "Janx" as a mount until they were attacked by the rabid wolves; Janx succumbed to the disease, attacked Shyleen, and fled. Shyleen pleaded with the party to try to help Janx before he died of the disease. They healed Shyleen somewhat, and then wandered on to eventually find the temple. There they were attacked by an monstrous vine which had been animated by the magics of the temple. After (somewhat narrowly) defeating the vine, they unlocked the secrets of the temple, and were healed. (This unfortunately and rather humorously ruined their chances of finding out whether the spring was poisoned, as the water might well have been purified by the temple).
They decided to try to capture Janx that evening, presuming that the wolves attacked the village. They did, and in a well-fought battle, the party managed to hypnotize Janx, knock him out, and capture him. As a DM, I was impressed by the party's balance-- while the ranger and barbarian fought with skill, the sorceror did well by hypnotizing many of the wolves so that the party couldn't be flanked and overwhelmed. The cleric, meanwhile, tossed some healing spells about and then fought as best he could. The monk took on Janx, trying her stunning blow and flurry-of-blows special skills on the wolves.
All in all, it was well done, and the party seems to have come together and to now have a sense of themselves, each other, and the game. I was a bit concerned, at first, that we were doing about a week of real-time per day of game-time, which could be a bit slow for a first adventure. It was, but the pace is picking up as I get a sense of how to keep things moving. And soon it's going to increase rather rapidly as the plot becomes a bit more linear for a while
After our the wizard got away on the wagon, we were approached by the town mayor who asked us if we could do the town a favor. It seems the river has mysteriously decreased in volume, and a pack of goblins near the source of the river have been blamed.So we deliberated on our possible courses of action and decided that is was preferable to tackle a small group of goblins than to chase after an unknown wizard, to an unknown location, for someone we barely knew. Therefor, we headed up into the hills to visit a small town on our way, and the Elf who was a friend of the Centaur left to follow after the wizard.
We talked with the leader of the Farming community, a Woman with a large family, and was offered 100gold if we restored the river to its normal flow. We also stopped by a few different inns at various locations, and everyone except Ceder ended up going to stay at a small village to help protect it against wolves. Ceder decided that it would be safer staying at the expensive inn on the Mtn.
As we talked to people about the river (and MOST people said it was the goblins) we began to hear more and more about wolves and a foaming mouth disease. We also heard rumors of a glowing beast/people/thing. Also mentioned was a druid in one forest that hadn't been seen for awhile, and a bubbling spring in another forest that was cursed and thought to be the cause of the wolves going mad. (the wolves aren't usually a problem).
So we ended up in an inn in the town with wolf problems. Kor was staying with the Ranger, and Jason was staying with the half-orc. Just as we were getting ready to go asleep, the wolves attacked unexpectedly. After a long battle highlighted by Garg playing whack-a-wolf with his axe (even Chaos's bad luck with dice didn't prevent her character from making mostly mincemeat out of the wolves). At one point a glowing wolf, who was super quick and had apparent Blink ability, charged into the fray. Garg connected on his swing, which while not killing the wolf, convinced it not to stick around. Jason managed to get off a detect magic spell which showed that the normal wolves were not magical. Obviously, the glowing white one was.
(DM's note to self: do not throw plot device at raging barbarian. Barbarian is likely to nearly kill said plot device.)
Kor was mostly tactiturn and reserved during the adventure. She choose to speak very little, and even managed to miss the big fight and we didn't have time to wake her up. Ceder also missed the big fight staying in his nice safe inn on the mtn. We're sure nothing happened to him there. :)
This recap was brought to by: Hal's Old Singular, The finest beer in the region.