A Herbal Experiment

Scribe Notes

Summary

GM: Anne
Season: Spring 822 WK
Night: Wednesday Starting 21st September
Location: Birdlands
Level: Bunny- Low

Anne will not be at the guild meeting as she has to work that morning, please shoot me a message with any questions

Party

1. Calliope Mercer - Human - Bard
2. Elidon Elf - Ice
3. Katya Elf - Necromancer
4. Boom Boom Orc - Fire
5. Flayre Human - Celestial
6. Argus Ramhammer (Hummper) Dwarf - Binder And his Owner Muffin the Ram
7. Vitruvius Human - Celestial

Employer

Marcel, An Experimental Herbalist/Alchemist

Mission

To cource and collect a rare herb he needs to complete an experiment

Pay

5,000sp each plus a potion if it works

Notable NPC's

Dust, A Budding Master Alchemist in Southgate

Scribe Notes

Session 1

Day 1 - New Quest

We all meet each other in the halls of the guild and get to know each other before we enter the meeting room. Katya is designated the party milsci with myself (Elidon) being the scribe and Flayre being the party leader. We meet our employer, a scraggly looking alchemist named Marcel, they tell us the details and offer to brew some potions if we needed before leaving, as this quest is not very time limited and they only require the Wortle berries before the season ends.

Marcel lets us know they only need the berries, nothing more and that we can experiment with a few if we want. Boomboom suggests we try pickle a few and Marcel agrees it could be a fun idea to mess with when we return.

We learn that there are usualy a number of beasts where we are heading and a Bear (three claw) roaming around that a previous party did not deal with, Marcel will not be following us there, and we'll meet back at their alchemy lab in seagate when we've got the berries.

We get on our way to pick up some horses and food before we leave, Argus bought us 6 ponies and a mule to carry the berries back with a few empty barrels on the mule's side. (3000sp with an offer to buy them back at half cost) After some discussion we determine that we should all as a party know how to work with Grenados as they seem to be a really common weapon and not everyone can use them (myself included). One week of training later and all party members have at least rank 0 Grenado training.

Day 8 - Journey Begins

We set out on our journey on the morning of the 8th day, heading towards the border of Rank and Tuscana, near the wild forests of Kazalah. Its a peaceful trip for the first day, nothing happening other than some squirrels roaming around, we setup camp for the night and begin our watches.

Session 2

Day 9 - Route finding

The Navigators realise there is no direct route there, and we have to avoid a mountain range during our journey, We can either go north-north-east, author, rank, mordeoux, tuscana. Or south to brasta and then to tuscana. Callie mentions that brasta is full of undead and goblins, and that Rank is full of dangers and death. It's likely to be foresty.

After some discussion we decided to go north into rank, exiting through seagate, towards southern rank. We're gonna stop at Luck for the first night of travel for a safe place to rest. The first day of the journey went well as we're still in kazalah before entering Luck.

Day 10 - Easy travels

the next day goes fine and we arrive in Rank by the end of the daytime and we camp in the wilderness

Day 11 - Oops, navigation error

katya finds us a lovely tree to shelter us for the night, the rangers and navigators realise it'll take longer to travel this route back and forth than our other choice, but oh well.

Day 12 - Duck Inn

We continue down south road (actually to the north) and arrive at a town 4 hours before sunset, it seems heavily fortified, surrounded by river flats and has a ford nearby where the road crosses the river, and decide to stay at the town.

Argus and Kaitya walk up to approach the entrance and see the guards wearing purple plate armour with symbols of scales on their plates, they're Urieleites. Argus DA's and find the armour is true silver and is coloured purple. We also see michalites behind the gate, I'm told they hate necromancy so we have to make sure Kaitya isn't seen using spells.

Entering through the gate, we are now in Southgate, its quite large and fortified being on the edge of goblin territories. We go looking for stables and a tavern and find one quickly. The horses stay in the stables as we spot a vacancy sign out the front that has a cute duck symbol on it.

upon entering we see what looks to be a crowded room of 50+ patrons and shoulder our way to the bar where an orc with a broken large tusk is running the place, looks to be a brawler. We go up and ask about rooms.

"I could always sleep with the sheep, wait not like that!" - Argus

It'll be 8 silver per large room, including animals in the stables, or 14 silver including animals for 2 rooms, we opt for 2 rooms so we can keep watch, but realise after the payment that we could have fit in one room...

Vitruvius, Callie and boom boom share 1 room so Callie can have her dark vision, kaitya, flaire, argus and I share the other.

"Does your teeth grow back?" - Argus to the barkeeping orc with a broken tooth

we go to bed, Argus and Vitruvius on the first watch, argus hears scratching on the outside of the building, he looks out the window and sees a dog scratching at the walls in the alley but it's nothing of note. the second watch sees nothing, the third watch hears the sound of distant horns and they smell a faint smoke, but can't find a source.

Day 13 - Shopping

we wake up with nothing missing, and get some breakfast porridge before heading out to the markets for some supplies and looking for fun items, Argus and I find an antiques store and enter, it looks like an explosion went off, things everywhere. We're greeted by a table with 5 bells, and we ring the many bells over and over because why not. An elderly elf greets us, she looks ancient, easily 6 thousand years old and a bit loopy.

Argus buys a magical ventriloquism puppet, red and blue quilted cloak and magical hand mirror for 4500 sp.

flaire, kaitya, boom boom and argus enter a store called the serpents fang, which seems to be an alchemy store, they meet dust the goblin alchemist who also seems a bit quirky, but normal for a goblin. We all spend a while becoming friends with dust as they make custom grenados based on spells spent in casting. We're gonna make some custom grenados in our downtime. We travel into dust's backroom/lab under the store, its quite large and looks to be a master alchemist's lab. Dust is a budding master, who's grandfather, Ash, taught them before they died.

We begin the process and give our essence for some area of effect spells, we will lose 2ft for a whole day, per spell, and be tired for 24 hours, it's going to take 4 days of time to get them made, and we'll be able to buy them for 600sp each, and can give what we don't buy back to the store for a credit.

Session 3

Day 14 - Alchemical Downtime

The process of making our spell grenados begins, this is day 1 or 2 for the non-alchemist downtime. I start to play with the ventriloquism puppet and make it walk and talk like its own creature, this seems a little off. At the same time, Vitruvius and Kaitya visit the local armorsmith. They both meet a burly orcish woman named Eyeless, and are presented with the armourer's works and things they found, so blue scale dragon armour catches Vitruvius's eye however its 40 thousand silver pieces and way outside of the budget. Kaitya wants a reduction in armour weight for their enchanted chainmail (which I also have a set of) and gets the weight factor reduced by 1, from 7 to 6, costing 500sp.

They make their way back to the rest of the party, and Callie and I go to check out the armorsmith, with Callie picks up some enchanted cloth armour that acts as steel plate without the weight penalty, for 1500sp and I get the same enchantment for my armour for a further 500sp.

Day 15 - New Grendaos

The grenados are complete! We obtain:

• 3x water to ice
• 2x adhesion
• 4x spectral warriors
• 2x noxious vapours
• 4x extinguish flames
• 8x fire burp
• 8x black fire
• 3x healing

We spend some time DA'ing and learning from the various alchemists what they think the grenados will do, it should be very interesting! As we worked to figure out what they'll do and what to keep, Argus, hearing about the dragon scale armour wanders off to buy it for the 40k sp (apparently he's quite rich). All of the grenados have unique alterations to the spells we used in the creation, some seem very dangerous such as the healing, water to ice and spectral warrior grenados they all are far more lethal than the normal spells.

Talking to dusk they let us know we'll get store credit for giving up the grenados we made, which we spend some time organising.

We trade in:

• 2x adhesions grenados
• 1x noxious vapours
• 2x spectral warriors
• 4x fire burp
• 2x black fire

for a 6600sp credit, towards 19500sp of other items we wanted from Dusk. Spending 12900sp from the party fund.

Day 16 - Travel

We leave in the morning and camp for the night, nothing eventful happens

Day 17 - Orchard Hamlet / Babe in Arms

We travel through the next day to a hamlet surrounded by plum and apple orchards, it sits on a fork in a river. The road goes through this town so we travel through it labrouxgaire, we arrive at the town an hour before sunset and ask around in town for a place to stay, there are 3 inns, one in the main square, called the babe in arms, or alternatively, the green plum or the 5 wheeled wagon. We stay at the babe in arms, the town has the usual suppliers, there is a ford north where there is a ferry service that runs upriver, heading where we need to go (down goes to ocean) It crosses in the morning once every other day.

We think it'll take about the same time to walk and the party is keen for a fight to test our new gear, so we decide to walk

Day 18 - Crossing the Streams

Walking through the day and night go well, and we continue north

Day 19 - North to Alcazar

We continue our trek to Alcazar, Rank City as muffin notices something in the bushes ahead of us ((session end))

Session 4

Day 19 Cont. Muffin Spots Something

We encounter a goblin roadside ambush as we walk down the roadway, which looks to be about 10 or so, one hits boom boom really hard and manages to stun him in between us dispatching everyone else.

Flaiyre uses one of the ice grenados on one of the goblins, and it works better than planned, almost freezing them solid. After realising that a few goblins aren't dead, just unconscious from our blow, we get a healer to heal a couple so we can interrogate, and test the effects of our healing grenado.

Boom boom interrogates/intimidates the goblins asking: "Where is your camp?" - "Nearby" "Overnight camp?" - "crazy, only over day camp" "Over day camp?" - "all packed down, with us"

We figure out that the goblin is an outcast from his group, as were the whole lot we killed, they were never fed and were looking for food. They attacked us so we don't feel too much empathy, except for Flayre who wants to keep it.

We gather another goblin and tie them up, and restore them to consciousness so we can begin testing, argus volunteers to be our test subject with boom boom being the one to throw the grenado (in hindsight we could have just had argus headbutt the thing, but oh well) Boom Boom goes to throw at argus, and misses, striking a goblin instead. it's immediately restored to full endurance as the other withers away, so it seems to transfer nearby health to the target (we hope)

As we try to figure out what to do with the goblin, flayre wants to keep it and beings asking it questions. Its name is Dirt. Boom boom starts to take a shine to it, and wants to look after it too. They want to use him as a guide to the camp he was exiled from, which seems to be in the same direction we're heading. We scoop up some bits of the other goblin as a snack for dirt and head off continuing north.

We rest for another night, chaining Dirt up so he doesn't try to kill us, none of the watches sees anything.

Session 5

Day 19 Cont. - Raiding horns

On the way to alcazar, camping the night we heard horns in the distance. We guess it's about, 18 to 48 goblins. Dirt tells us the horns mean coming or going for the raiding party.

Day 20 to 22 - Walking

We walked with nothing of note happening

Day 22 - Alcazar

We walk for another 2 days before we make it to alcazar, the Largest city we've seen yet, more significant than any in rank, Built 10ft above high tide zone.

Day 23

We spend an extra day skirting around the exterior of alcazar, because we don't need to spend more money, and avoid taking dirt through markets

Day 24 - Midpoint

1 day out of alcazar, we find the part in the blue-stone mountains, our way into mordeoux, Elidon knows this is the only above-ground path and no military outpost in this area. As we make our way through the pass, the footsteps begin to echo across the walls of the pass. As the sun sets we see a palisade wall with a gate in it, across the pass, a moment later we see one head popping over. "I'll let joe know you're here".

We enter and see a number of places, but No uniformity among the people there. We're in midpoint, in the blue-stone mountain pass. We find a place to stable the horses and stay in a palace called "Joes". It's full of bunkbeds, free to stay in and it's paid for by the ureilite church.

Breakfast is complimentary but we have to take care of our own dinner,

"What's animal is venison, horse?" - Katya

We bed down for the night with some bert goblin stew.

Day 25 to 30 - Mordeoux to Kiel

Next morning, the morning watch notices the rest of the room clear out fast, We get something that looks like porridge and prepare to keep moving. Mid-day we finish our way through the pass and arrive in mordeoux.

It looks very similar to rank, Rangers estimate another 5 days to the fortress of Kiel, We hear more horns through the night, once on the first watch, and second, on last watch.

• Elidon Fell asleep while journaling oops

Callie bought a horn while we were in town to try to recreate the goblin sounds.

Day 30 - From Kiel to Tuscana

We arrive at Kiel - built on a high escarpment, a large plateau for caravan parking, We spend 10 miles travelling in the cold and arrive at tuscana, its 2 days to the nearest town.

Argus and callie notice more horns, 2 quickly back to back, followed by a third, We hear another 2 horns in the night but no more, we guess it's because livestock pups are being born and stolen for food.

Day 31 - Tuscana

We find a thicket of villages and bushes heavily fortified gatehouse, which leads to a bridge and a city on an island. We're currently on the right side of the water to find our berries, if we cross we'd have to get a ford to cross. We decide to head downriver to the border of rank.

Day 33 - Downriver

After spending 2 days walking along the banks downriver, we see a forest opening where it meets the mountains. We think we're roughly in the right place for our search. We find a hunting trail leading into the forest/woods and We can see what looks to be a hunting cabin with the lights on.

Katya opens the door and walks into the shack after knocking and getting no answer, Dirt tries to run past but gets caught and stopped before he can run in. There is an outhouse outside. The house has an internal wall with a door, we hear rustling from it after Boom Boom calls out "Hello!?"

We see an early 20s young woman, Her husband isn't home. The people still outside notice the husband's return, Mid 20's man, with short cut hair and wielding a bow and a carcass. We talk with him and he lets us know we've gotta head further up a trail where we can't take the horses and gives us directions:

"The trail to 3rd elm tree, heading west for a couple of miles, should be in a clearing"

Session 6 - Argus spends a shit

Day 33 Cont. - Happy trails

In the Afternoon, we leave our horses in the pen Callie built for us. We grab the small barrels from the mule and begin to head off. Callie casts strength on us (+6 for 7 hours). Katya leads the way as we try follow the hard-to-follow path, They trip over a rope they don't notice and falls backwards as Argus fails to grab them, as a net flies 20ft into the air. (this is about 30m into the walk)

The counterweight is a massive boulder which seems weird, not normal for this to exist in this scale. The knots are really good, but the trap is poor quality, it could have been set up by someone giant or many many people working together. Argus spends a fucking ridiculous amount of time unravelling the rope from the rock, instead of just cutting the rope (callie wanted the rope)

We encounter 2 other traps, the frequency and complexity picks up the closer we get. Dirt is drooling on Katya's shoulders, two hours later we encounter the 3rd elm tree. We travel into the night and try setting up camp without a campsite or gear.

1st watch: The forrst gets loud as the night sets in, more animal noises but nothing catches our eyes/ears 2nd watch: notices some crashing nearby, sounds like it might be coming towards us

The party gets ready for combat with Boom Boom casting our weapons before waking us, As boom boom finishes casting the noise stops'. A bush stops moving 50ft away

"It's a Bush Rider" - Argus "bush rider, sheep sleeper" Ramhammer

Boom boom approaches and speaks some orcish, Dirt also joins in speaking goblin as we see a goblin leave the bush with a stick, looking starving. It seems to be hungry, argus goes to toss it some Bert and Barf jerky.

"Mmm salted barf" - Boom Boom

Flayre tries to speak to it with a silent tongue and it understands, but in not-so-silent tongue replies with screeching goblin words. Dirt smacks the goblin in the head with its own stick, New goblin is named Arg (the sound of it getting hit by a stick).

Kaitya gives dirt their dagger, and picks him up like a baby. Katya has decided to adopt dirt as their child.

Night watch continues fine - 3rd watch begins, and about an hour into the watch, we hear more rustling, getting louder. Seems like it's quickly approaching, we can't tell how many are there but we prepare for a fight. Arg is still tied up, dirt is asleep. Noxious vapours grenade has one day of usage left so katya hands it to one of us.

I climb a tree and start casting, We see a pack of wild dogs, but larger There are an indeterminate amount of wolves.

Session 7

Day 34 - Dog fight

A group of 7 or more wolves made their way into our camp, we fought them off with a few large injuries. Boom Boom got hurt but had a potion to help. Muffin killed a dog with a swift headbutt, Katya pierced a vital artery of one of the dogs, Vitruvius eviscerates another causing it to bleed out, and my bowstring snapped as Vitruvius mauled another as we clean up the rest and head back to bed.

Session 8

Day 34 - Berry bush bandits

As we wrap up our fight, we get back to our rest. Callie is cranky from being woken up earlier. We continue down the path for the remainder of the daylight and late afternoon find a clearing. looks like a grove of some kind, the herbalists start investigating looking for the wortle berries and spot a trampled bush that looks lke it was carved into poorly. Elidon approached cautiously and confirms these are the berries we've been trying to find. There are barely a trampled handful left with the rest being destroyed.

The rangers notice a set of tracks that look a few days old, lots of tiny boots around goblin size and canine. we collect some seeds from the destroyed berries as we start to take notes on where the tracks are coming from and going, looks to be overlapping like they came here and went back the same way.

Argus DA's and DE's the area and finds there is a permanent verdant life magical effect in place but we can't determine the source, the tracks look to be of 6 to 12 creatures heading southeast. We figure that Arg might know something so we start another interrogation in silent tongue, and are told it's less than a day to his camp/cave. After some discussion, we decide to follow the tracks til nightfall and set up camp in the woods again.

Night watch seems to go fine with no alerts, but when we woke up we found all the tracks had been covered up and are no longer able to be followed, after some 'polite discussion' with arg, he starts leading us southwards to his camp - it takes a moment for us to realise that we're suddenly going a different direction, and another 'polite discussion' tying Arg up like a pinyata reveals taht some of his tribe came through to hid their tracks, and come up with the plan to ambush us to the south.

Feeling betrayed, we cut Arg lose giving Dirt katyas dagger and let him get some training done on the traitorous Arg. Flayre tries to call out to some creatures of dark and calls a rat to us, we talk ot ity and it knows where the goblins reside and wants treats in return for telling us, we feed it some berry matter, and goblin jerky, continuing to the southeast again.

We follow the rat for half the day and arrive quietly to the outskirts of a series of hillocks, it looks to be 15ft across and looks like a natural opening, the rat tells us that its probably full of about 4 rat litters worth of goblins, 24 to 36. We perpare our magics and enter 2 abreast. Travelling down a 20ft ramp, the cavers narrow to the point we have to move single file.

we move another 50ft along with the journeyman milsci's noticing this is a very intentional choke point, with the wall now widening again into a worked cave with a staircase leading up, we climb it slowly and enter another worked room with 2 exits, left is barking dogs and right looks to be heavily trafficked and have bedrolls, we check the bedrolls finding them all to be empty hearing the sound of goblins speaking near the dogs and decide tis best to take them out now.

Session 9

We see 5 goblins ahead at what looks to be a bar/tavern area the goblins have for drinking, we throw one of the spectral warrior grenados at them to wipe them out quickly as we sneak around the back caverns to a large water source. We kill another 3 goblins as dirt runs off ahead without us. We follow him and find another room with 4 goblins spread out within, we try to interrogate them but the language barrier proves to be too frustrating so we deal with the 4.

argus notices a flat panel on the wall above our heads and taps on it, within a few moments it opens revealing dirt and a hidden storeroom. Katya climbs in first and spots some barrels with berries in them, the berries we need. We find some amulets, coin pouches and weapons. we inspect the weapons to find out they are silvered, and we grab what we think could be valuable.

We start dividing the berries into our smaller containers and carting them out the passages we came through, as we leave we start a small fire in the storeroom to wipe out the food supplies of the goblin nest to ensure they aren't around much longer.

We exit the hovel in the late afternoon and we start making our way back the way we came, collecting our horses and gear from the hunter.

It takes all in all about a month for us to get back from here.

Session 10

On our journey home we make a few stops back, argus spends some of the time trying to collect an owl to be another animal companion, eventually finding one and naming it Harazmus.

a few days in after we find Harazmus, we the night watch hears massive wings beating above and watches as Dirt is carried into the air by a massive owl-like creature. Katya is devastated.

We resupply in the town we walked around with nothing eventful having happened between now and then, the thought of buying some lambs crosses flayres and argus's mind but we decide against it for time and logistics reasons, they can always come back another time for them.

We visit Dust again and get him to investigate some vials we collected from the goblins, finding out they are expensive alchemical supplies.

Callie goes to the luthier we visited to look for a master-crafted lute, but on luck.

WE make it back to Kazalah, making our way back to the guild to collect our rewards and end the adventure handing off the berries to the alchemist.

Mil-Sci

Daily pattern

How much time does the party spend sleeping, eating, traveling, doing rituals, etc each day

Travel Magics

What travel magic options does the party have, how far per cast/or per day if duration is longer than usual travel time. Can the party eat/sleep/etc on the mode of transport.

Watch Order

Day Watch. Used when stationary, or on a larger transport such as a ship
First - ??
Second - ??
Third - ??

Night watch
First - Elidon & Callie
Second - Argus, Vitruvious & Boom Boom
Third - Flayre & Katya

Marching Order

Skirmish Formations (Front)
Double File Argus + Elidon Cali + Flayre Katya + Vitrivous BoomBoom	Single File Argus Elidon Cali Flayre Katya V BoomBoom

Buffs

General Buff Notes

Buffs listed in the table don't need to be detailed, other buffs not on the table must be mentioned at the time they are cast.
Y means always on, N/- means never on, 'Sit.' means when the party has time for buffs before a fight.
Weapon Spells which weapon/s it is going on normally should be noted also

Long duration buffs

Magic	Rk	Effects	Dur	CA	El	KY	BB	Fl	AR	V	MF
Fire Armour (BB)	10	44 Points Ablative	11 Hours	?	Y	Y	Y	?	Y	Y	Y
Fireproofing (BB)	10	Protection vs non magical fire	11 Hours	?	Y	Y	Y	?	Y	Y	Y
Name (??)	##	????	? Hours	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?

Short duration buffs

Magic	Rk	Effects	Dur	CA	EL	KY	BB	FL	AR	V	MF
Weapon of Flames (BB)	9	+10SC +5DM	14 Mins	?	?	?	Glaive	?	Warhammer	Broadsword	Horn caps
Spectral Weapon	4	+5SC +3DM	9 Mins	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
Name ???	??	????	? Mins	?	?	?	?	?	?	?	?

Loot and Expenses

Purchases

Seagate

• 6x ponies (3000sp - Argus)
• 1x mule (free?)

Southgate

• 2x rooms at the Inn (14sp)

Southgate - Antiques Store

• 1x magical ventriloquism puppet
• 1x magical cloak, red and blue
• 1x magical hand mirror, shows illusions

(4500sp total - Argus)

Southgate - Serpents Fang

• TBD

Calendar

Spring
	Moonday		Duesday		W'ansday		Th'rsday		Frysday		Reapsday		Sunday
	Candlemansa
Thaw (10)
			1	Guild Meeting	2		3		4		5	The Carzalan Generals Ball	6
	7		8		9		10		11		12		13
	14		15		16		17		18		19		20
	21		22		23		24		25		26		27
	28		29		30
Seedtime (11)
							1		2		3		4
	5		6		7		8	Rites of Thunor	9		10		11
	12		13		14		15	Equinox	16		17	Eostre	18	The Seagate Spring Ball
	19		20		21		22		23		24		25
	26		27		28		29		30
Blossom (12)
											1		2
	3		4		5		6		7		8		9
	10		11		12		13		14		15		16
	17		18		19		20		21	Floralia	22		23
	24		25		26		27		28		29		30	Walpurgisnacht