Session 31 - Anti-Harpy Carrots
Thu 10th Dec 20:00 - 23:45
In-game timeline: Marpenoth 28 - Uktar 10 DR1489
Our "Heroes" are winding down after an eventful 24 hours in the temple of the Clerics of Shar. Having got out of the temple, barely alive, they quickly head back to the old Temple of Tyr where they had left Braydol, the Cleric of Shar / Ilmater that they had left tied up. Having left him unattended for 24 hours, he was no longer tied up, but was still in the temple, waiting for their return, trying to sleep. The party woke him up.
After much discussion, a plan was formed to escape the Isle. At first light they headed out, with Braydol, collecting the idol from the Temple of Chantea on the way. With Drogan still exhausted it was slow work, and it took them a few uneventful hours to get back to the big rock at the start of the sand dunes. The group decided to split up, with Devon and Drogan waiting by the rock and Alwaith, Dwarrowsteel and Braydol heading to the quarry to collect the ex-slaves.
It proved fortunate that Devon decided to wait with Drogan, since, while the others were gone, the remaining three harpies made their move. Their singing attempted to lure the two adventurers into the dunes. Luckily only Drogan succumbed to the singing and, since he was exhausted, Devon was able to run after Drogan and catch him up before he had reached the dangerous dunes.
Ignoring the continued harpy singing from a distance, Devon leapt on top of Drogan and managed to force a couple of carrots - the only things he had to hand - in Drogan's ears - temporarily blocking out the Harpy's song. Drogan was snapped out of his charmed state, but wondered why he had a halfling riding his back and two carrots sticking out of his ears. Suspecting that removing a carrot would immediately result in Drogan becoming charmed again, Devon managed to quickly and temporarily remove one carrot and shout into Drogan's ear, telling him to cover his ears against the singing. Not one to question such obscure instructions, Drogan did so, replacing the carrots with his own thumbs, and running back to the big rock.
While this was going on the harpies had closed in. With the dwarf running away with his hands over his ears, they figured, probably wrongly, that Devon would be easier pickings for them, and they flew down to attack. Devon prepared a spray of colour and managed to blind one of the harpies, and that ensured that not only did the blind harpy miss her attacks, but she also put off the other two, causing them to similarly miss. Devon followed up with a critical hit from his dagger on the blinded harpy, before he followed Drogan and ran back towards the rock. Drogan, in the meantime, afraid to remove his hands from his ears, readied his unpractised kung-fu moves against any attacking harpies.
But the flying beasts focussed on Devon, flying in and scoring some hits on him before he was able to respond by taking the injured harpy down. Drogan, furious at missing out on the action for the last 12 seconds, decided to fly into a rage and rush over as fast as his little, exhausted legs could carry him, to the nearest harpy and launch a headbutt at the harpy, still ensuring that his hands covered his ears. Trying to offset his exhaustion, he attacked recklessly and managed to score two impressive headbutt hits - his head seeming to be made of stone. The harpies retaliated, one of them focussing on Drogan whilst the other continued to attack Devon, and both managed to hit. Devon, furious that three harpies were causing so much aggravation, retaliated with a good hit and Drogan continued on his head butting spree, looking like a pogoing maniac, but slowly whittling away at the harpies. The weird tactics worked - the harpies got another hit in, but Devon managed to reduce 'his' harpy down to almost-dead levels of health, then ran off, leaving the 'dwarf-in-a-punk-mosh-pit' Drogan to headbutt both harpies to death. Impressive.
With another strange story racked up to tell their grandchildren, Devon and Drogan sat by the big rock and waited for the others to return from the quarry.
Meanwhile at the quarry, Dwarrow and Alwaith met with the ex-slaves and passed over the dead body of Clarice, causing much wailing and mourning from Bart and Helen, Clarice's parents. They also passed on the bad news that they had found the dead body of Hosgrun Rockseeker, pecked to death by the harpies. They tried to lighten the mood by explaining that they had managed to kill pretty much everything else on the island, though.
Once the slaves had mourned their dead, and eaten some of the rations that our "Heroes" had thoughtfully provided, they all headed back to the big rock. In a typical show of empathy and sensitivity towards a group of terrified slaves who had lost members of their family, Drogan and Devon constructed an elaborate practical joke involving dead harpies. Only Drogan's old shipmate, Gaver “Ropey” Wraithrock seemed to appreciate the humour.
With time pressing on, the group headed back over the dunes. Despite having Feandris' amulet, that Braydol and the slaves had confirmed allowed the clerics to cross the dunes in safety without being accosted by undead, the party decided to carefully follow their clear but convoluted route back to the beach, where they arrived just as the evening was setting in.
There was no sign of the ship, which they later realised was because it wasn't due for another day. There was also no sign of their little rowboat that they had left, though there was quite a lot of fresh driftwood on the beach, that looked a lot like pieces of their rowboat. There was also a body of a half-elf female, face down in the sand.
Drogan wandered over to the body and proclaimed that he had no idea what killed her, or even if she was actually dead. Dwarrow decided to try to get a bit more information and actually confirmed that she was not dead, just unconscious. They revived her with a spell and then, after Alwaith had done his usual intimidation, interrogated her.
It transpired that unsurprisingly the group of pirates they had met previously had followed the safe path through the dunes (much arguing within the party about whose fault it was that the pirates got hold of the safe route!), stolen the rowboat and tried to row away from the island, but the boat was smashed up on the reef, with Harile, the female half-elf, seemingly the sole survivor. As they waited for Hawkeye to arrive with the ship, they swapped stories, and it turned out that Harile had been wanting to leave the pirate group for a while now - it seemed that a pirate life was NOT for her. The party agreed to take her back with them.
Eventually the ship arrived and the party, along with Harile, Braydol and the group of ex-slaves, all boarded and sailed uneventfully back to Neverwinter. Back in the big city, they let Harile go on her way and wished her luck - she did warn them in parting that the pirate group were well known for bearing grudges, so be careful! They also took Braydol back to the temple of Ilmater and confirmed his story of being a spy amongst the Clerics on the island. They left him with the temple.
Our "Heroes" then collected their reward, and then complained about how small it was. They hoped that the cache of 'relics' they returned would improve their standing, but they were only told that in fact the things they brought back weren't relics, they were just 'treasures'. On the plus side, this meant that they were able to sell them to increase the coffers of the party, though they then kicked themselves a little (and of course, blamed each other) for not managing to find any relics that were sure to be on the island somewhere.
However, they did have enough money, and experience, to LEVEL UP! to level 6, which they did in Neverwinter. Dwarrow got a letter from home, that made him a little homesick, and a letter from Corkie in Oakhurst that mentioned some problems they were having back there, and also mentioning the name Meepo. And so, unsurprisingly, the plan is now to head back to Oakhurst, to maybe help out again there, before moving on with chasing down the Order of the Black Sun. Hopefully.