Aeric's Journal #4

Aeric Lebeda’s Journal Entry 4, for the 25th (Sunday) of Sarenith of the year 4708.

We have returned back to Oleg’s after continuing our exploration. We decided to ensure we had maps of the areas to the east and west of Oleg’s.

Since our departure on the 11th, there have been few items of note. We received a package at Oleg’s, it looks like it was the equipment and head of the kobold shaman Tartuk. I believe this was the kobold chief acknowledging our assistance in overthrowing Tartuk. There was a journal of some sort, Jonah decided to translate it for us.

We encountered a small hut out in the plains during a rainstorm. It seems to belong to a twitchy fellow named Bokken. Bokken seems to be a potion maker of some sort, I didn’t really get much time to talk with him as he pushed us out and told us to come back if we had some Fangberries.

The storm got much worse so we decided to stop exploring and hunker down for a bit. A small band of kobolds discovered our camp. When I tried to communicate with them I mangled my draconic and accidentally prompted them to attack us. So I had to explode most of them, one kobold ran off screaming about demons in the woods.

We finished our eastern loop and stopped in briefly at Oleg’s before trying to acquire some radishes for Svetlana. We decided to try and barter with the kobolds of the radish patch by trading some spears for the radishes. The bartering was going kind of poorly when I received a message that I presumed came from Jonah, but he did sound kind of funny. Jonah had used the bartering as a distraction and snuck in and liberated some radishes. Since we had what we came for we decided to leave peacefully, and we left the spears as trade.

We explored slightly north of Oleg’s along the road where we encountered a wine merchant named Pavel, who strangely enough didn’t have any wine. Tomaz started talking quite excitedly with the fellow and wound up spinning an impressive tale and some illusions to show what he was thinking of for the future of the Stolen Lands. I was quite impressed myself, Tomaz definitely has a gift with talking with people. Tomaz decided we needed a fair or festival to start bringing the folks around together and celebrate to help boost his dream of a civilized area.

As we continued west we found one morning that our sentry had fallen asleep and that all our weapons were tied up in a tree with our own rope. Jonah seemed quite sure what had caused it, I was less positive but I presumed it was the work of some mischievous fey creatures. After a long day, Jonah finally managed to talk to the little fey creatures. One of which seemed to enjoy Tomaz’s bottles of wine. Once they were reasonably friendly with us they provided us with some information about the surrounding areas, a clearing full of dangerous traps, a hot spring, a big bear in a cave and a bridge with some bad big-uns nearby. Tomaz also invited them to the festival…

As we continued our exploration now heading back towards Oleg’s we entered the clearing where the fey creatures had mentioned the dangerous traps. And they were right! The clearing was full of bear traps. Both Jonah, Tomaz and Jonah’s pony got hit with the traps. While we managed to get both Jonah and Tomaz free with considerable difficulty, we had to put the pony down. Jonah was quite upset about the whole affair and blamed his dead rat Frederick for not helping him. Jonah went so far as to throw Frederick into the bush! Anna went to look for Frederick but didn’t find him. That night I discovered Frederick in my saddlebags!

While I felt somewhat foolish, I had a one sided chat with the dead rat. And I decided to return him to Jonah when we were back at Oleg’s. Preferably while Jonah was not watching.

We returned to Oleg’s on the 25th of the month, which would give Tomaz sometime to organize his festival, and allow the rest of us time to prepare a ‘welcome’ for any bandits who might show up on the 1st of the next month.