Devastation

(Submitted by Milo)
The scouts continued northeast, following the tanaruks' backtrail. Eren and Toric collaborated to make some rune stones with Sendings to leave at the Landing for our friends. [Eren: I've always wanted pagers!]

Eren Sent to Kyra to say that Jaana has teleported back home to warn her people that the Thayvians were experimenting with Spellfire. Since Jaana is gone, she said it would be safe for us to return to the Landing. Kyra's response was that there are plenty of folks protecting the Landing at the moment and she and Toric should join us. They did. [Currently at the Landing - Gareth and several priests/mages of Mystra, a contingent from the Daggerford Militia (led by Cork) and a group of the Ilmataran Monks, the Black Knives. All of our dead have been raised and repairs are well under way.]

The next day, we continued along the trail. We figured we were only going to follow this another day or maybe two after thinking about it for a while. We realized (Adam called for an Int check all around.) that the last time we got to a fey'ri strong hold, it was just overrun with troops, fiendish cross breed animals (right down to the damn bats in the cavern) and all kinds of servants. We admitted that even our crew couldn't take on that big a group. (Hmm. Maybe it is time to talk to certain people and make sure the people in power [ie- With armies at their disposal.] in this area know that the fey'ri are on the rise.)

We were able to figure that it looked like the tanaruk were force marching, only camping every other day. There are signs of fey'ri landing only occassionaly, presumably to give marching orders. We found just a few signs of what we suspected are places where one of the slime creatures was for a bit. It doesn't seem that the slimes were marching with the tanaruk, more like they showed up once in a while or something. (They're hard to track anyway.)

We did find something disturbing along the trail -- the remains of a human leg, evidently discarded after all the good meat had been eaten off. It made us more determined and we pushed on.

Further on, we found a farm. This place wasn't just pillaged, it was destroyed in the tanaruk version of fun. The buildings were trashed, furniture broken, most of the farm animals dead and torn apart and the fields were fouled as well. There were one or two critters alive that must have evaded the raid and come back later. We found the remains of an adult male and female and a couple of kids. Toric could tell that the woman was tortured to death and violated, probably by fey'ri, not the tanaruk. We gave them a decent burial and moved on.

Theeg took high lookout and spotted a small settlement further along our path. There were just barely traces of smoke visible. We moved in quickly. Just barely a village, maybe a couple dozen buildings. Again, it looked to have been the site of destruction for no other reason than to destroy. Many of the buildings were burned down with some smoke here and there. The well head wall has even been broken and we figured the well had probably been fouled. (Aw, crap. I just thought of something. How much you wanna bet we'll find bodies down that well? One of the best ways to foul a water source back in the real dark ages. Not looking forward to that climb.)

There were burned bodies lying around and others off to one side. It looked like somebody had been collecting the bodies and preparing a mass grave. The bodies that were burned to the point of not being able to stay together in one piece if picked up had only been covered by tarps. Obviously, there were some survivors.

We followed the only fresh tracks in the village (maybe a couple dozen buildings) to the entrance to a root cellar. We decide that no orc or elf looking folks should open that door, so Eren went down first. Kyra had to join her at the bottom of the stairs for a minute to pop the lock on the door down there. Eren entered cautiously. There was a girl about 14-15 with a little boy and girl clinging to her legs. The older girl was holding a pitchfork pointed toward Eren, obviously scared to death but determined to fight. All three looked dehydrated, dirty and exhausted, to say the least. Looked like they hadn't slept in a couple days, at least, and the only thing holding them up was adrenaline.

The girl was too panicked to let Eren approach. Toric came down the steps and cast a Calm Emotions spell from just outside the door. The little kids pretty much collapsed against the teenager. The pitchfork dropped. The teenager didn't really know much about the attack. Their parents told them to hide in the root cellar and they did. They came out to find the village as it is. She pretty much collapsed shortly thereafter.

We asked Theeg to fly high scout again. He spotted a couple of outlying farms and we went to check them for survivors as well. The farms were destroyed, although one of them was not hit by the tanaruk. The tracks showed two attackers, draconic or at least reptilian, bigger than horses but not by too much. They definitely attacked from the air but the way the tracks showed they moved made us think of large predator cats. We looked around for evidence of breath weapon use but found no fire scorch, or acid burn or anything like that. We did find one area where there is some kind of residue all over the grass. Eren carefully took a sample to check [later].

That's about where we stopped. We were thinking about getting the kids back to the Landing but realized that puts them in harm's way. Secomber isn't that far away if I remember what Adam said correctly and we know that Silverymoon is fairly safe. On the other hand, Toric and Milo are quite familiar with a good orphanage school.