PlanetADnD.com

Liri's ears having caught Papa's remark, she approaches him. "You talk about the beauty of the night sky, is that something you study?" she asks him with interest.

~he studies beauty.:..~ angel thinks to herself

"A home isn't a home unless it has four wheels." Eldon suggests as he rides to the front.

Papa responds to Liri.. "I don't study it with a professional reason, but I do lay awake most nights, and if I am in a room, it has to have window. I like to stare at the stars and ponder our place in this world. Its a vast place and can make one lonely.... And no one should be alone, you should be able to share it with someone".

"Indeed my friend, perhaps you are right." Angel goes silent, concentrating on her mount.

Philosopy lessons completed, the group passes through the compound gate and onto an imperial road. It is not a perfect example of imperial maintenance - has weeds growing up between some of the paving stones - but it appears at least to have received seasonal upkeep.
Maughus moves out to the front of the column, with Ash next to him, leading the way.

The group only stays on the imperial road for a short time, then takes a right turn and heads off onto a side trail.

Angel keeps to the middle, her eyes on both Liri and the Imperials, there was something she couldn't put her finger on here.

The trip passes more or less uneventfully. If the forest remembers the chaos of last night, it gives no sign. The first indication that anything at all unusual has happened comes when a bright patch is seen through the trees – an area that appears lit by full sunlight despite the day’s overcast.

The cavalrymen spread out, picking their way carefully through the wood, getting closer to a thicker stand of trees and vegetation that marks the boundary of a clearing, the clearing where your group camped last night, and where the night’s battle was fought.

The illumination comes from a single tree at the center, the one Papa touched with light.

Maughus rides a circuit around the clearing, the returns: “Nobody home. Whatever happened last night after we left, it is over now.”

The cavalrymen lead the way into the clearing. Ash says, quietly: “Well, it would appear that there was a battle here.”

In the clearing are several grotdeir corpses, being picked at by carrion birds and looking no better in the light of day than they did last night. They are large and uruk-like, but their skin is a pale sickly grey rather than dark. Their faces sport large toothy mouths and wide noses, and toothy mouths. They are clad in bits of scavenged armor.

A long burn scar on the ground shows where a lightning bolt struck, and adjacent to it, surrounded by dead grotdeir is a larger body, its ribcage burned and shattered where the lighning bolt punched through it. Ogre-sized, but not a common ogre, with sickly yellowish-grey skin mottled with white.

Near the tree is the wreckage of Fraso’s cart, still with lumps of ice in the bed. The luggage that was left aboard lies strewn about, its contents dumped out and scattered. A small iron-bound chest perhaps a foot square and six inches deep lies smashed open, with coins scattered around it – Fraso’s strongbox.

Papa goes around to each body to check for any life signs.

"Have you ever seen creatures like this?" Angel asks, using her blade to prod at one of the fallen creatures, "We were attacked by hordes of them." Sighing she moves towards the strongbox, "We should take what we can back to Master Fraso."

Bastian dismounts and starts gathering the scattered remnants of the cart. "I think we should take what we can back to the town. Not so much for Fraso's benefit, but for the safety of anyone who may stumble upon this site. Who knows what the old man brings with him on his travels." Glancing at the cart, he shrugs and follows up with "I suppose we don't need the ice any longer, do we?" He looks to the closest guardsman and asks, "Has anyone in town use for ice? I'd hate to waste it if there were some use for it."

"Indeed, my thoughts were similar, his hands would appear to be the safest place for such things, if a safe place exists." Angel flashes the cleric a smile.

The grotdeir are all thoroughly, and messily, dead. Some were killed by the lightning bolt that took down the ogre-thing. Others were cut down with weapons.



Barber rolls one of them over, to look at a face that hasn’t been picked at by the birds. “I have never seen one of these before. It is like an uruk, but not quite.”

Octos takes a knee next to the corpse to look carefully at its face. “It looks like a cave fish to me. These eyes are blind. I wonder how it finds its way around.”



Fraso had been traveling light on this trip. Most of the boxes that had been aboard the wagon going to Orr’s Bay had been left there, to make room for the body and the ice. The few remaining pieces of Fraso’s luggage have all been opened and dumped, their contents scattered.

The strongbox is wrecked – it looks to have been smashed open with a large hammer. The coins it held now litter the ground, mostly silver, but some gold. A few loose gems lie in the mud, too, along with a gold ring with a large red gem, and a bracelet with small orange stones.

Bastian begins gathering up the other luggage. The cases are mostly wrecked – cut or smashed open to get at the contents, but with some effort the stuff can be piled back into the remains of the cases.

Its easy enough to figure whose bag was whose, based on the contents. Hiric’s stuff lies near the real wheel of the wagon. On the other side, a pile of women’s clothes, and nearby in the mud is a raggedy pillow sewn from scraps of old towels which on closer examination turns out to be in the shape of a turtle. Fraso’s clothing makes a small pile, smaller than Hiric’s actually, and nearby are two broken cases lying near piles of obscure instruments, and a leather roll-case atop a pile of wicked looking knives.

There’s more ice here than would be easy to carry back without a cart, but the cart itself is beyond repair.

Angel focuses on the women's clothes, collecting them in a pile she slips them inside a saddle bag as best she can, and collects the pillow, certain that it belongs to the young Salia.

--------

Eldon looks around dumbfounded, the utter chaos was too much to take in, "What.... What the hell happened here? This is some scary shit.."

"Ok blondie, what do you what me to do?" He asks, looking around.

---------

"Check the bodies, look for things that might identify them..?" Angel suggests. "Liri, could you collect the rings and gems please?'

Lirl laughs her musical laugh. "Actually, I was just going to ask you if I should!" she smiles.
She looks for a scrap of cloth to roughly clean them with, then sets out to gather the gems and pieces of jewellery. Wrapped in cloth, she will stow them in one of Casta's saddlebags.

When they are done with picking over the wreckage and gather again, she will say in a casual way, pointing to the uruk and ogre things: "Scary as these are, they actually were the less dangerous of our attackers. They were followed by elf-like beings who killed them, and one of ours, and took the corpse Master Fraso wanted to have investigated with them.

I say elf-like because they were like elves in a way that these are like uruk and ogres."