Separated by a wooden palisade Sinsin, the chief of Spali, exited to investigate the group of travelers before taking Matthias away to speak with him privately. As Halthor endured a meaningless conversation from Oogi about his days playing Ball in a Cup, Matthias was told of a monster that occupies the pond of the dead, and the armor and long spear belonging to his grandfather that could be found in its depts. Only after they retrieved said items would they be granted passage.
Of course, the party was simply given an initial task of mapping the villages, and they still had a sizable amount of rations and supplies. They could simply ignore his request and continue with their work without entering the village at all. But the Combative Companions are the very same people who hunted down a saber tooth tiger, not because they were promised anything, but because they were told about it, so naturally, they did it anyways.
Setting off southwest, Uri spends the next few hours guiding the party to what would be an incredibly cursed pond, sitting in the fields of the dead, that he wanted nothing to do with. The place is incredibly ominous, but aside from a few ravens, the swamp seems fairly barren. Nightfall comes, the party sets up camp, and there's this overwhelming dread that something is going to attack them in the night. They could feel a presence of some sort, but the only thing that had changed over the course of several hours and multiple night-shifts, were the ravens growing closer, and the waters of the swamps beginning to ripple.
"Ripples?" said Halthor bow at the ready and cheeks clenched, "Fuck that noise I gotta tell someone about this!"
Halthor awakens the party far earlier than planned because everything about the ripples and encroaching ravens spooked him far too much to assume something wasn't going to happen. The party waited and observed their surroundings but the mask of darkness around them made what could be approaching far too ambiguous to assess. So, Halthor did the only thing he figured he could do. He started shooting at the ravens.
They probably had it coming anyways.
His intuition seemed to pay off, as the sound of cracking glass could be heard and the raven had burst into a fountain of green ichor. Certain the ravens had something to do with what was happening, he proceeded to shoot every raven he saw, now accompanied by Oogi until none were left. But there was something far more concerning that Halthor picked up on. The entire time the ravens grew closer, they were never seen flying. They were always perched on the branches of their tree, and even as they were being fired upon, they never flew away. It was then that Halthor realized, it wasn't the ravens that were their enemy.
It was the entire tree itself.
Halthor let loose an arrow into the bark of the tree causing it to spasm revealing that the tree were merely a monster mimicking its surroundings, and the party appropriately began beating the shit out of the creature as its form slowly dissolve away into a green ooze encompassing an organ. Matthias experience some acidic burning from the creature, but aside from that, the party was successful in chopping down the tree.
The following day passed without incident, but the night continued to be lively as ever as the night watch of Oogi, Halthor and Klattu witnessed a group of men approaching them. Men are at least in theory less dangerous than giant tree monsters so Halthor hailed the travelers only to reveal it's the very same men Matthias had dueled nearly a week ago, the Tydu. Thankfully, they had not arrived for the sake of a midnight fight and asked if they could partake in the group's fire. They had revealed that they arrived in search of a sea witch located by a pond. Allegedly, they could buy herbs from her that granted the ability to talk to fish. Having little knowledge of the location of the pond of witch however, the party and the Tydu made an agreement. If the party were willing to help them find their witch, the Tydu would be willing to guide the party to the pond they were looking for to face their monster. The party agreed.
The following morning the Tydu lead the party to a pond that had a stone cottage located at the bottom. The Tydu planned on simply waiting by the waters to see what might happen, but the party quickly realize that that plan was going nowhere fast, so Halthor and Bodhi decide to strip down and dive into the waters to see if this witch they were looking for was in the cottage at the bottom.
Surprisingly, she was.
After knocking on the door of the cottage, it opens to reveal a woman with the face of an eel in a dry room that the two men could breath in. Her name is Igna. Halthor explained that they come representing a group of men that wish to buy herbs from her, so she tells them that she she will arrive to the surface in an hour after preparing her herbs and doing whatever it is women need to do in order to be ready for an encounter.
Having metaphorically put her face on, the witch emerged having very literally donned the face of a beautiful woman to accompany the body that Halthor and Bodhi had seen. The Tydu gain the herbs they desired without issue, but Matthias mentioned something to the witch that was unintentionally the biggest brained thing he had done in a while. Matthias, not realizing the party arrived to this pond to buy herbs, attempted to pick a fight with whatever was at the bottom of the pond assuming it was the monster the party were tasked with slaying. He apologized, telling Igna that he assumed she was "A terrible monster, hoarding armor and spear from a noble chief's grandfather." Matthias's goldfish like memory caused him to make a halfhearted attempt to save face after literally yelling at the pond that she was "balding" and about to "get slapped" not even an hour ago. But in explaining his mistake that he thought Igna was the monster holding the armor and spear, Igna reveals that she just so happens to have the items the party were pursuing, indirectly revealing that the group were probably set out to murder her. Thankfully not many people seemed to pick up the subtext of what was happening, including Igna. She had given the party the items they desired, and with their mission handled in a surprisingly open and shut fashion the group set out to return to Spali and celebrate their success and, if Thorvid is so lucky to do so, trick a woman into marrying him before he completely turns into a frog monster.
...
On second thought, this entire ending resolved itself too neatly.
Here's one more monster to deal with. In fact, here's a giant hairless wolf-man monster called a vovkulak, that can't be killed without silver weapons and just tore a traveler in half with its bare hands. The Tydu knew that the Combative Companions could not kill this beast due to the only silver weapon they had being held by Hurass, who was nearly a week away suntanning his gross frog-skin on the ship. So the Tydu decided to go out on an especially noble note, by sacrificing themselves to hold the beast back as the party escaped to Spali. In a truly bitter sweet ending, the party fled leaving the Tydu to their fate, and after arriving to Spali they entered with arms open to their presence. A celebration was to be thrown in honor of their achievement, but it was no longer merely for them, extending itself to honor the bravery, and sacrifice, of the Tydu.
Session 13 Downtime Events
The Spali cheer upon your return of the King Menov's Spear and Armor. Two bulls are brough forth and their throats are slain. Men draw daggers and plunge them into the beasts spilling blood and severing tendons. Others pile wood and light a pair of bonfires in preperation of roasting the beasts. Women bring forth jugs of mead and as others begin to prepare pies.
Steaming food is brought into the Sinsin's hall where three great tables have been set. You are seated flanking Chief Sinsin as choice cuts of meats and cups of mead are set before you. Joy and laughter fills the air. The Spali sing songs of past glories and you learn a tale of them and the Antrofahi.
In ages past, after the fall of the Ludozeri, the Spali and Antrofahi gathered spears and waged war against another. They gathered on the Island Skyfa and painted the earth red. A Javelin thrown by a Spali struck deep in the chest of Bathor, King of the Antrofahi, and he was slain. Women of the Antrofahi wailed and weeped for three months and the rain weeped with them.
In a moments of silence Thorvid asks Chief Sinsin of for a wife. Chief Sinsin told Thorvid that he would be accepted as a member of the Spali if he proved his valor as a warrior. If he proved adequate he would be accepted into a Spali by marriage.
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