Search and Rescue

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This adventure takes place on the plane of Iska in the Mithrian Portal system.

Summary

Adventure: Search and Rescue (working title)
GM: Helen Saggers
Session: Summer 808
Night: Fridays
Level: Low/Medium
Place: 20 Pahi Pl West Harbour

Party

1. Menolly Female Elf, Earth mage, and her pets,
2. Grizelda Female Giant, Witch
3. Aqualina Female human, Water mage
4. Sau Rus Male Human, Necromancer
5. Sooty Male Elf, Fire mage

Mission

A search for missing persons, namely the entire "Bucks" party. All miising Persons are Halflings.

Employer

The "Fairy godmother" of the Bride.

Pay

A sum from the godmothers horde,(A share of 53752sp) plus loot.

Scribe Notes

Search and Rescue

• Menolly - blond female elven pacifistic Earth Mage and her pets, two dogs and a little monkey
• Sauros - weedy human male cartographer, linguist and Necromancer
• Aqualina - short dusky-skinned human Water Mage, wearing only a scrap of fabric (I should point out it was an entire parau - A)
• Grizelda - female giant Wiccan mage (scribe)
• Sooty - elven male Fire mage

Day One
Count Engalton had said Grizelda must try to adventure at greater difficulty, so I had signed up for another, tougher adventure this season. We met in Room 5 and introduced ourselves. Sooty will be military scientist, and Grizelda was chosen as scribe.

  Saurus (of Grizelda the Giantess): "She weighs as much as the rest of us put together - I think she's allowed to forget anything she likes."

After Guild security bring in the employer - a halfling with a sack accompanied by a human, and they begin to explain the mission. Apparently, the "halfling" befriended some members of a halfling community when both were young. One close friend, a girl named Petunia, has since grown up, and was about to be married when all the males from the community disappeared. They were on a trip to a human trip with a load of grain.

Unfortunately, the "halfling" was going through something of a growth spurt, being not actually a halfling, but a young dragon. This caused interruptions for feeding and so on. She complained of the most terrible itching, which could only be relieved in her dragon form.

The young bride was on the plane of Iskar. We would have to use the Pasifikan portal system to get to Rangiwhero, and thence to Paleolithica, through Frigidia, and so to Iskar. Sooty would aid by casting fire-running on all of us. Menolly fussed over keeping her pets warm. Personally, I was thinking she would have been kinder to leave them at home, since they appeared to be quite ordinary, and more likely to be a liability than an asset on adventure.

Our payment of 53752sp was on deposit with the Guild. We do research at the Guild Library, and learn much about where we will be going. We sort out the details - joining the queue outside Lucius' office getting enchantments, getting the cold weather gear out, getting lesser enchantments, and so on. The "halfling" asked for a meadow where she could change into her dragon form and relieve the itching. Aqualina went with her and ended up doing the oiling. (I am so going to run out of massage oil - A)

Day Two
After breakfast, we went portal hopping. First we went to the Sea of Grass, then to Rangiwhero in Pasifika, and then we walked up the hill to the portal to Paleolithica. Sooty started summoning an efreet, while we waited, and talked. I learned from the human, whose name was Emma, that the dragon was too young to have a name, but I felt it would be impolite to call her "hey, you". I tried hard to think of a usename for her, and eventually settle on Bianca, which is Tuscanan for little white one. She was continually either hungry or itchy. Apparently, her aunty Wingstar can teleport between planes.

Finally Sooty was finished. He cast the spells and we ran for it. We missed the portal, having gone a bit too far west of north, and Bianca showed us the right way. Aqualina, decided to go swimming in the nearby river, although it was very cold. (Cold for her perhaps, but not for me - A)

Day Three
We cast many spells so that we would be ready to go before the sunrise. Sooty insisted that Aqualina should wear her heaviest plate armour, which she complained about. Aqualina made potions to make us strong, and Menolly makes the Armours of Earth and Strengths of Stone. Then Menolly backfires and first makes herself blind, and then amnesiac. We decided to stay put while the blindness wore off, and Emma, who owned up to being a Namer, removed the curse.

Aqualina went to get fish for lunch. I searched for herbs and vegetables. The dragon stole the fish so I made vegetable risotto for lunch. We did get fish for dinner, and I grilled them with herbs, and served them on a bed of savoury polenta.

Day Four
And so we tried again, this time paring the spells down to the necessities. Sooty asked nicely and Bianca shrank down to a very little halfling, only eighteen inches tall. We went through the portal, and the Halfling/dragon immediately went to sleep. Then Sooty cast the Wildfires and we ran. It was very cold, and snowing, and the wind howled as we ran across the ice. We followed Sooty who had been this way before. We have to run up a cliff, run through a narrow tunnel, and cross a rope bridge, across a very deep chasm. It is very cold at the bottom. There was a cow-bell attached to the bridge. Emma said it was not magical. Finally we come to a cavern with a platform with a portal on it, and a lot of bones. It was dark.

Emma told us which symbol to use to get to the halfling village. Suddenly it was bright and warm, and we were in a clearing in a jungle. Three trails led out of it. We were on Iskar. Sooty talked about telling the local Guardian that we were not harmful. Apparently it speaks elf.

We asked Emma, and she said we should use the north path. Then Sooty asked how far it would be to the village, and the dragon said it would be three Hours flight. So we camped in the clearing. I though about summoning a monkey to be my familiar, but decided that it would be better for the monkey if done later. Aqualina wanted to go down the east path to find water, but Sooty said no. Sooty asked Emma to teach him the true name of the plane. The dragon disappeared, presumably hunting. Meanwhile, I start teaching Aqualina to use a shield. After half a day had passed, and after lunch, Sooty cast the Wildfires, and we ran down the trail, through the jungle, across a bridge, through a swamp, to the edge of the jungle, where there was farmland, but no actual farms.

Sooty had Aqualina change out of her heavy armour (into my kraken skin - A), and go in front, being the most normal looking of us all. We walked along the trail, following Aqualina, until it got to dusk. We camped and I made Pasta Puttanesca for dinner. Menolly would not eat it, because it had anchovies in it. She said she only eats vegetables. I hastily decided to revise the menu. Sau Rus borrowed the crystals and started drawing a map.

The halfling village proved to be remarkably difficult to spot. Night fell, and then the rain came. Sooty asked Aqualina to waterproof his cloak, and I got her to waterproof my armour.

Day Five
During the night, Emma and Bianca joined us, although Bianca was more a Sandy.... They told us where to find the halfling village, and we soon realised just why it was so hard to spot when we got there. It was mostly underground, and all you could see was the doors. We approached the first one, and Sooty did some yelling in Elvish, since none of us spoke Halfling, and then we went over the hill to see someone who could speak better Elvish - a priest of some sort. Over the hill we found a pair of double-doors, and inside them was a halfling who did indeed speak Elvish. That meant we could more or less communicate, and when I said Petunia, we were told she lived back across the hill. So we took the priest and went back.

I learned that the halfling had never seen a person as large as me. Then Sooty suggested that giants would eat halfling babies. I considered this to be grave insult. We waited where we would not stand on anybody's roof, while the halfling priest went to get Petunia. I am still most angered at Sooty.

Eventually the halflings came back. There was a girl halfling with them. Aqualina explained why we were here, saying that we had been sent by the Guardians to help with their problem. She said how they had gone to the town with wagons and ponies, and not come back. The town was four days away by halfling wagon. They had four plain wagons full of sacks of grain, each drawn by a pony, and were armed with bows. The missing harflings are Lazlo the groom and 11 others... They did not know the name of the grain merchant. Village mark on sacks, and branded on ponies. The wagons were relatively small - only as long as Aqualina is tall. They were going to buy things for house - such as big copper pot.

Concluding that we would not learn more here, we made our way along the road heading to the town. The dragon shortly came back - she had been hiding as a dog with Menolly's dogs. She was now a greenish colour - perhaps her name should now be Olive. She told us that the wagons did in fact arrive at the town, but the grain merchant wasn't there, so they went on to the next town. So, Sooty cast the wildfires and we ran for the town. After about seventy miles the trees stopped, and so did we. There was a wide brown river. On the banks was a town, walled with an earth bank topped by a wooden palisade, perhaps twelve feet tall. There were human-sized fields. Aqualina was pushed to the front, as we headed into the town. There were big shady trees, and dark-skinned people sitting under them, having lunch and sleeping. As we headed in we met Bianca (who was being a dog) and Emma again. Emma said that the halflings had gone downriver.

Aqualina tries Common on the gate guards, then Elvish. They do not understand. Sooty knew a language somewhat closer to theirs, and established that the people we needed to talk to would be at the other gate, downriver. Sooty learned that the halflings did go this way, and that there was a large town or city about four days downriver, at the river's mouth, and on the way there was three waystations. We walk for a mile or so on past the town downriver, and Aqualina makes a boat and a current to get us there. Then she catches a fish that had lots of teeth. Twenty-five miles downriver there was a village. We stop and Sooty talks to old man, in broken whatever it is. The halflings came and went from here. We have to sleep on the boat. At Sooty's suggestion we did not dock, but carried on drifting down the river. The night passed uneventfully.

Day Six
We came across the next village in the morning, and Sooty learned from a toothless old woman that the halflings had come through here. Aqualina made the mage current and by morning teatime we reached the next village, and find the same story. Now the river was even wider, and it tasted salty. By midday we reached the city, a huge conglomeration of hovels filled with humans. It stank. We headed into dock and there was an exchange of words and coins, so we got to park the boat. We then walked around the town so as to come in the way the halflings did, and learned they had come in here and some had gone out.

So we went to find the grain merchant in market. This was a big building with a fat guard at the door who told us to see a clerk who told us that the halflings had been here and traded grain.

Day Six continued by Menolly
The grain merchant was very fluent in elvish and would have made an excellent translator, which Sooty asked him to be. But he had other commitments elsewhere and declined. He did have a nephew that also spoke elvish and so the young chap was summoned. We asked him to guide us to the metal merchants, so we could enquire about the halflings.

We spent a few hours talking to various copper pot merchants on the Forge road, as they had gone in search of big copper pots for 1 of the wedding gifts. Eventually we found the right one, and the merchant did remember the halflings. They had orders some pots, and paid half on the order. They were to pay the other half when they picked up the pots, but they hadn't come back. There is still 3 ounces of silver owing on the pots. The merchant did recall that the halflings were going to stay on the commons, the ground outside the city walls. That was 2 and a bit weeks ago.

So off to look at the commons to see is anyone there knows where the halflings are. We had to go back around to the South Gate of the walls, and headed through to outside. The city is quite protected. It was noted apart from the huge walls around the city, and the 2 gated entrance which is locked just after sunset, that there is a huge ditch dug around the city, and the jungle etc has been cut way back away from the city.

There were a few people out on the commons, people exercising horses and some goat herders. We head for one of the goat herders, and everyone else on the commons scarpers... I mean, having a group heading in your direction wouldn't be so bad, except 1 is a giant and another had this gloomy shadow circling him. So, yeah, they mostly fled. Anyway, we did catch up to 1 young goat herder and asked him if he had seen 4 wagons, 4 ponies and any halflings.

He proceeded to inform us that yes, he had, and that they were way around the commons, right at the edge, shooting at people who got close. They had been there for a couple of weeks now although the shooting is only a recent activity. For us to go investigate this, we would end up outside after the gates close. This isn't a problem for us, but our young translator it is. So Sooty makes him an offer of sponsorship into a guild for free learning in exchange for his translating for us. And he says he needs to talk to his family about it. So we arrange to meet him at the gates in the morning.

We head around the city looking for the halflings, and in due course found them. They had moved their wagons into a circle, set up some tents, and when we approached there was much yelling and threatening and shooting of arrows that just missed. But eventually they do talk, even if they don't let us in the camp and we discover that a pile of the halflings are missing. It seems Laslo and some others went into town the night they arrived for some partying, and the last nights of freedom before getting married and all that, but they never came back. A couple of others also went into the city to look for the first missing group, but they also have not returned and the last few halflings had dubbed the city evil. So we found them, but 8 or so are actually missing, so we haven't found them all.

We made camp outside the shooting zone of the halflings, and made a cold camp. Apparently it's dangerous out here, people go missing. We aren't sure if it's jungle animals, people or weird stuff, but we take the precaution of making everyone unseen, or for myself blend into the background and pass the night on watch in case we have to help the halflings defend their camp.

Some unsavouries went past in the night, but nothing happened.

Day seven told by Menolly
Morning dawned with a weird mist everywhere, which I ascertained was magical. It needed to be to hide a dragon-sized halfling and her rider :) and we updated them on the info we had found out. Sooty also discusses cleaning scales options with her but nothing is confirmed...

We head to the gates to meet our interpreter and talk to him about the offer. He says his family want to know more about us, so we offer to go meet them. We head back into town, into one of the residential areas with high walled houses and get invited behind one of the walls by a stern guard who looked at us through a peep hole. The house or complex we are lead into is a number of smaller houses all connected with walk ways and roof protected areas. Obviously an extended family uses this home area, and being tropical alot of things are done outside.

We get lead to an open lounge come meeting place area, and wait while he gets his uncle and grandma.
(Menolly signs off here)

Day Seven (Grizelda continues)
I asked our translator what his name was, and he said we could call him Ibin. The city has many names, but the people in the city call it Northport. It was as much a collection of walled villages as a city, each inhabited by the members of one guild or people from one tribe. Some time later a little old human female approached, with a stringy old human male. They wished to know what benefit the College (as in the Seagate Adventurers Guild) would be to their son. Sooty explained. As for the missing halflings, the most likely place they went to party would have been the alehouses for sailors near the docks. We also learned that slavery was legal here, and that to avoid being enslaved we needed to join a guild. They suggested the Guild of Guards. So that's where we went next.

We came to an archway with a crossed sword and axe carved above it. Inside there were several desks, many doors and a lot of humans. Ibin did the talking for us. We were "foreign mercenaries" who wished to register. We signed a big book, and handed over an ounce of gold (twenty silver coins) each. We got given a disc each with a seal on it to wear. We would have to pay 20% tax on anything we officially earn as guards.

Next we went to the alehouses. We soon learned that the halfling party had gone from inn to inn, starting with the better ones, and drinking their way down to the dregs. The innkeeper at the last in did not remember the halflings leaving. I started lifting tables, and finding drunks, none of them halflings. We learned that there would be another innkeeper on duty later. Sooty would not let me take over the inn's kitchen - and I could not bring myself to eat the boiled fish they brought out for dinner. So I nibbled on some biscotti from my haversack. We entertained ourselves arguing. I thought the other customers wanted to see us fight, and were disappointed when all we did was yell at each other.

The night shift innkeeper turned up, and we learned that the halflings had started a fight, so they had been chucked out. I suggested we stake out the alley, unseen, but we did not see anyone watching, and only some sailors were thrown out. So we followed the drunken sailors to the gate to the docks, which was open, but guarded. Ibin asked the gate guards, but they did not remember the halflings. What they did recall was a wagonload of barrels, which sounded hollow. Which was odd because barrels of food or goods heading on to the docks ought to be full. It was beginning to sound as if Grizelda's theory, that the halflings were taken by slavers, was right. Sauros suggested that we pretend to be drunk so we could wander around the docks. As it turned out, one drunken-seeming, loudly singing, swaying and beer-stinking giant was ample diversion.

We staggered our way to the slavers' end of the docks. It stank. There were three big fat slaver ships in the dock, and there were four warehouses built on stilts, and many guards. We distracted one by Grizelda reeling and nearly falling on him, while Sooty got underneath, to find that the floor was made of muddy slats. Only the fourth warehouse was inhabited, and that not by halfling. None of the ships had warm holds. We wobbled back and found a medium quality inn for the night. The problem with this was that the beds were too short and too narrow. And there was no way I would contemplate the top bunk... And the big dog snored... (I also found a little monkey curled up on me - A)

  Aqualina (on the consequences of Grizelda sleeping upstairs): "Waiter, waiter, there's a giant in my soup!"

Day Eight
There were pancakes for breakfast. Thick ones, served with something resembling a fruit preserve. They were not at all bad. We returned to our raft so we could use crystal balls to look into the slave ship holds, without people watching. There were three slave ships there, presumably the same ones. As I expected, they were empty. We will have to look elsewhere for our halflings.

So we went to the harbour master's office and got our translator to talk to one of the clerks. Although no slave ships had left during the indicated period, there were some that were thought to be suspicious, being engaged in piracy, with slaving on the side. We obtained a list of these vessels, and when they left harbour. Also, we learned of a wrecked vessel down the coast (that Aqualina could probably fix up for us to use).

So we paid the nice clerk for his trouble, and headed back to our raft, then rafted to the shipwreck (after Aqualina managed to backfire the mage current, and made the tide go out under a bunch of moored ships, two wharves down, much to the consternation of the persons crewing them (A- I didn't do it, nobody saw me, you can't prove a thing)).

We found the shipwreck. It had a broken mast, and a big hole in it. It was also half full of sand and mud. Sauros checked, and there were no undead in it. Aqualina summoned a water elemental and got it to clean out the boat. (A - There was also the saturated earth and the mage current to float it). Then we assembled piles of wood for the necromancer to shape into place, in order to seal the boat. We floated it, and Aqualina checked the keel, which proved to be surprisingly sound. We could now see that the ship was a small lateen-rigged vessel of an unfamiliar kind. By which time it was nearly dark. Then we beached it, and planned to go back to town in the morning and get shipwrights and a sailmaker, together with some foodstuffs, freshwater, and some big chests for Sooty.

I got Aqualina to summon some small sharks for dinner, which I cooked nicely and served with fry bread and salad. But Menolly would not eat it. Most strange, even for an elf. Just after dinner, Emma turned up and was pleased to enjoy the leftovers. Apparently the dragon was off chasing long-nosed pigs in the jungle. After the argument about what to do with pirates we might capture, I decided to read the runestones to find out a little more about where the halflings are. Where will the halflings we seek be at dawn? - "A dark and damp place.". Then we slept on our raft.

  Sooty: "And all we have to do is make it look as if we jury-rigged a sail after a storm." 
  Aqualina: "Even if we have to use a pair of Grizelda's bloomers..."    

Day Nine
Aqualina took Ibin and I on the raft back to the town. We got to the shipwrights' and asked about hiring a shipwright, obtaining a fresh mast, rudder, sail, and a lot of rope. The lot totalled fifty gold. Ali the Shipwright came with us, and then showed us how to put up the mast, set the rigging and sail. He explained that this kind of ship was called a tartane. It took all the rest of that day, the next and the day after to fix up the ship. Sooty fireproofed the chests and put salamanders in them, as a nasty surprise for any pirate that took them.

Day Eleven
I read the stones again that evening, after the shipwright had gone to sleep. Where will the halflings we seek be at noon tomorrow? - "Under and over, and round about."

Day Twelve
We took the shipwright back to town on the raft. Then they had me try to summon a storm. I started seeing things. Eventually the storm came. Aqualina sat it out.... But then I started seeing monsters. So I decided to sleep it off.

Day Thirteen
We made preparations, and then headed out to sea. We had put up one tatty sail, and stowed the rest below decks to make it look as if the boat was storm-damaged. Then Aqualina gave us water-breathing and made a mage current. And so we sailed, and it was most tedious. Sau Rus busied himself with map-making. At Sooty's suggestion (and in spite of Aqualina's protests) I tried talking to a seagull. After some confusion, I learned that there was a "people place" with "fighting boats" one day to the south of here. Which may well be the town we came from.

  Sooty: "I'm not calling a kraken a fish."
  Grizelda: "Not to its face anyway."

Sooty's rules for surviving a hostile marketplace without being robbed:

1. Be poor.
2. Be well-armed.
3. Be a giant.

Around lunchtime, I was still chatting to the seagull, when it told me we were about to run into a boat. We stopped to investigate. It was a mostly submerged rowboat, intact, but badly scarred with the marks of some kind of cutting instrument. Aqualina dived overboard and bailed it out and then, with some difficulty, we hauled it on board. Sauros sat in the rowboat and did his questioning the dead thing, to see if somebody died in this boat. Apparently someone had. One person. Who did not speak enough common to be able to answer Sauros' questions. For dinner Aqualina summoned fish.... And got smacked in the face by a "flish", a fish with wings that sort of flew. So that's we had for dinner. Flied flish and flitters. Repeatedly, I tried to question the dead but it did not work.

Day Fourteen
In the morning, the seagull was still there. It dive-bombed Aqualina, who was floating just under the water, purifying, before I cast the talking to animals, and then I fed it some scraps. That day we sailed for an inlet to the south.

  Grizelda: "This planning to take over the world, it must be an elf thing. Please tell me it's an elf thing. I mean, what are you going to do with it?"

That afternoon we saw a group of sails on the horizon. They seemed completely uninterested in us. We spotted a fishing boat, and chased it. The fisherman was remarkably helpful. He explained that the pirates had a base to the north, but it was unlikely they had the halflings, since they would not take on untrained crew. More likely, the slavers had them, and their base was to the southwest, at the mouth of a river. They practiced their vile trade up and down that river.

Sauros settled down and started using the crystal balls to map the suspect river. At the mouth, it proved to be exceptionally wide, and very brown. We spent some time discussing how to handle the slavers and came to the conclusion that it would be simplest (and cheapest) to just buy the wee folk from them. What happened to the slavers thereafter would be another matter. After Aqualina failed to summon any tuna, I made Pasta Puttanesca for dinner. The night passed almost uneventfully.

Day Fifteen
Early in the morning, well before dawn, we stopped suddenly. We had run into a sandbar. Aqualina cast a mage current and got us off. Given the probability of running into more obstacles, we decided to stay, tossed out an anchor, and set out lanterns. I put out a net, but when I hauled it back there was nothing but weed. So much for fish for breakfast.

  Sauros: "You know, if some nameless horror came up, and you called it "Bob" it would be just confused."
  Grizelda: "I think that nameless horrors are only nameless because the Namers can't bring themselves to name them."

Aqualina cast a mage current, and we made our way up into the river mouth. We still had not seen another vessel since the fishing boat. It was some hours later when we spotted the top of a mast sticking out above the reeds on the north bank, perhaps seventy miles upriver. Sauros got out his viewing crystal and looked. It had the shape of a slaver vessel, with a single deck, but no cabins, and was a similar class of ship to what we had. There was a jetty and a boardwalk leading to a path. We considered approaching stealthily, but seeing nobody on deck, we sailed up to it and moored alongside. Sooty checked the hold, and discovered that it was empty, aside from ballast and rings to which chains could be attached.

We took down the sails, bundled them up, and took them and the chests inland. We walked onto the path, and beyond that we found date palms, and past that a tall thorny hedge, too tall for me to see over. With the other crystal ball, we could see that there was a farm, and some buildings. There were people working the fields, some distance away. Eventually we found a big wide gate, very secure and very closed. Sooty thumped on the gate with his staff. Nobody answered, so Aqualina picked the lock on the gate, and we walked up to the buildings. The only sign of life was a dog, which barked at us. My pet seagull squawked back at it, as well as Menolly's dogs. And about ten minutes later, a thin dark-skinned person, tall for a human, came out. We learned that he had no wee jungle folk, because there was no market for them, and neither had any of the slavers on this river. He added that the pirates might have some, because the slavers would not trade to the pirates, and so the pirates must use what they could get, including wee jungle folk, which were not much use for anything.

We left, after reminding the fellow to lock the gates, and sailed back down river, using the mage current. By the time it got dark, we were well out to sea. We discussed lanterns, and put my ever-burning torch on the bow to light the way.

Day Sixteen
By the time the next day dawned, we were well to the northeast of the pirate's lair. We made our way along the coast to the west hunting for pirates. By lunchtime, the seagull was getting hungry again, and I was getting a bit tetchy. So I refused to feed it until it showed us where the pirate lair was. "Behind the rocks, back there," it said, and so we turned around, and the seagull was our guide. We had indeed missed a hidden inlet.

Our crystal ball showed a narrow entrance, with a larger harbour behind. There was a beach and the buildings of a palisaded village among the trees. There were two ships, both larger than ours, one a full-sized cog. Further in were signs of slash and burn farming, like the halflings used in the jungle. We heaved to, out to sea, and Sooty summoned an efreet, while Aqualina summoned a water elemental. The efreet and elemental were both sent out to investigate. The elemental reported a reef by the entrance, sharks in the bay, and many rocks.

After some argument, we got Aqualina to cast some Waters of Vision spells to look into some of the buildings. In the first she saw goats and horses. The second proved to be the eating and drinking hall. The third was a house. The next was a warehouse full of boxes and stuff. Many castings and two restoratives later, she had still not located the halflings, though we had a much better idea of what was where in the village.

  Sooty: "Elves eat babies!"
  Menolly: "Yes, baby plants."   

In the end, lacking sufficient knowledge of where the halflings were, we parked our own boat safely on a beach some miles away. Then Aqualina turned a pile of driftwood into a serviceable canoe and we headed back to the beach behind the village under cover of darkness. Sooty, Saurus and I (with much care) fed some of the driftwood to the salamanders. Then I found another one of my spells not so useless, as I summoned a storm to provide concealment. Menolly, her pets, Saurus and I snuck slowly to the top of the ridge under the cover of the storm, while Aqualina snuck over and down the other side.

By the time they got to the village the rain was fair bucketing down. The village was surrounded by a tall fence, but the gates were simple, designed only to keep animals out. They discovered that there were over thirty buildings, twice as many as we thought. There were dogs, but the storm helped confuse them as well. Seeing that the dogs were preventing them getting close to the buildings, Sooty climbed onto a roof, and set it on fire. Meanwhile, he and Aqualina retreated near one of the big houses.

The flames caught with a bang and a flash we saw and heard from the ridge, and the dogs started barking madly. According to Menolly, they were yelling, "Fire, fire." The people were running around carrying buckets and such. And then Sooty set a salamander on it, to make it burn more. The nearest dogs barked, "There's a monster in the fire." Aqualina and Sooty were busy looking around, noting which buildings that were empty of teenagers and children, watching the excitement from the doorways. Eventually the building began to collapse, and Sooty got to send the salamander home. Then the villagers got to put the fire out.

Aqualina and Sooty got out of the village into to jungle and the rain, and they used a puddle to cast waters of vision to look into the cellars under two of the houses and the tavern. There were people there, humans, who were clearly captives. There were more empty beds under the tavern, and Sooty used his crystal of vision to watch. Eventually he saw the hole, and the tunnel and the nine people who came out, eight muddy halflings and a human. Finally, we had found them. Now we just had to get them out.

Mil Sci Stuff

Assumptions;

• 8 hours travelling a day
• 2 hours breaking and setting camp to allow for rituals.
• 12 hours of rest/sleep and watches.

Marching Order

Aqualina, Grizelda.
Dog 1, Sooty, Menolly, Dog 2
Saurus.

Watch Order

Provisional Watch Order

• Watch 1, 4 hours each: Aqualina, Sau Rus, Menolly+Pets.
• Watch 2, 6 hours each: Grizelda, Sooty.

Buffs

"A" = always on, "Y" = Yes please, "-" not required, blank = as required, "#" = Priority order.

Magic	Rk	Effects	Grizelda	Aqualina	Sau Rus	Sooty	Menolly	Briar	Basil	Bella
Armour of Earth	8	lasts 4 and 1/2 hours	Y	Y	-		Y
Strength of Stone	8	lasts 9 hours	Y	Y
Dark Vision?	??		-	Y	Y	-	-	-	-	-
Fire Proofing	9	10 Hrs				A
Fire Armour	6	28 Protection, 7 hours	Y	Y
Quickness	9	4 Targets	1	1	1	1	2	2	2	2
Weapon of Flames	7	+8% SC, +4 Dam, 12 min	-	-	1	2	3
Waterbreathing	20	21 hours		A
Resist Cold	8	9 hours
	??