I am Tarkquin Kelt, songster and poet, accomplished player of the recorder and beater of drums. I live in what is called the City. It has no other name as we believe it is the one and only city remaining in what is left of Toril, a place we understand was once vibrant and full of life but is now largely wasteland. The city has survived for hundreds of years, slowly building it'a population back up until now it stands on the precipice. The under ground springs and fungus farms are struggling to meet the ever growing population and every scrap of land within the city walls is now taken up. One of the few releases from life's drudgery, alcohol, is now illegal. The city council of 11 have made the decision that the four city races of elves, dwarves, dragon born & humans must reach out explore the wasteland in the hope of finding additional resources and habitable land so the city can continue to expand.
It is at this point that I volunteered as one the explorers believing fame & fortune could be mine or at the very least I could earn some food for our families table. And the tales I could tell might fill the theatres with awestruck citizens, eager for news of what lies outside the city walls.
Six of us were assigned to work together and we were immediately lead through a single file corridor under the city walls. There were other groups and looking at my associates I counted myself lucky as some of the members of other groups looked like they shouldn't be outside the city walls. Probably debtors and convicts paying their debt back.
My other party members were 3 dwarves; Baern Ungart, a cleric and two rangers Eric & Leto III, a Dragonborn; Norixius Kriv, and another human; Vigharthur Thorogod, a sorcerer. At first appraisal a decent enough mix.
We headed off to the north west with Eric scouting. The day was hot with few clouds in the sky and the sun beating down on us. It was uneventful and traveled until shortly before nightfall when we setup a camp. However, the night was not uneventful as a group of 7 lizard like creatures disturbed one of the watches. They appeared to be harmless and in awe of "the chosen", Norixius. No information could be gathered from them and they left.
On the second day we broke camp and not long after setting off, again towards the NW, we spotted some ruins. Rather than just noting them and reporting their location we decided to investigate. On closer examination the ruins appeared to be a village and our dwarven contingent identified them of human construction. Movement was spotted further inside the ruins and Leto demonstrated his credentials by sneaking up and identifying some giant centipedes. Our sorcerer, Vigharthur , made short work of them by frying them all in a burning fire that blew out the back wall of the building. He is obviously not a man to be trifled with! Baern & Eric seemed interested in finding some centipede remains to eat. the ways of dwarves will forever remain impenetrable to me!
I headed off to check around the perimeter while Vigharthur & Leto dug in the sand looking for crypts. They quickly became exhausted in the heat of the desert sun. Norixius checked for wells and I sat down and drew out a map of the ruins. Whilst doing this I spotted a humanoid figure up on a dune some 200m away. The figure dropped down as soon as it saw that I had noticed it. I passed this information on to the others and Leto & Vigharthur kept an eye on it while Eric & Baern took up the work digging up the sand in search of crypts and find a trap door. Opening this up we found some steps leading down into pitch darkness.
The steps opened up into an underground room with a locked door. In an unusual move for dwarves it was asked if anyone could pick locks (rather than simply bashing the door down). I reluctantly admitted I might have some ability in this area. Thankfully the party asked no questions about how I had picked up this skill and I was able to successfully pick the lock.
Eric opened the door and found 5 grey shapes in the revealed a large room. The shapes appeared to be humanoid and breathing and had crystals in patches on their hairless, dry and cracked skin. Eric plucked up the courage to venture into the room and tap one of them on the shoulder. this caused the shape to turn and scream showing a green glint in their eyes. All the statues started to move.
I think it's fair to say that dwarven panic set in. Eric & Baern started swinging their weapons with Baern shattering on the the shapes head revealing it to be made of dust and bone. I cast my True Strike. Norixius joined the fray and soon we had destroyed all five, but not before Eric had taken a significant hit. Fortunately I was able to heal him. I get the impression from looking around that this room was acting as a prison and that these "creatures" had been locked down here to keep them out of the way. I found some quartz like substance left over from the "creatures" which seemed to be worth enough to take back with us. We could find nothing else of interest in the crypt and so we headed back to the surface.
On getting back out in the fresh air we discovered that Vigharthur & Leto had set off to investigate the humanoid in the sand dunes, who turned out to be an Orc. They were able to subdue it and bring it back to the crypt. Vigharthur & myself continued investigating the ruins whilst the rest of the party interrogated the orc. In an exchange of information that seemed to involve both Baern taking some significant bruising the orc told us he was scouting and that he came from 3 days travel to the north and that there were hunting grounds off to the west. The orc said he knows who we are and his only information on the creatures in the crypt was that they were lost in a spiritual way. It was bovious to me that Baern held a grudge against this orc and I felt this would not be the last time they fought one another.
I found one other building that seemed larger than the one we assumed to be a church with the crypt underneath it.
We decided to stay the night, which was uneventful. However, in the morning Norixius found some strips of meat and two arrows outside his tent. It appears Norixius has some Kobold admirers.
We set off the following morning and spent an uneventful day travelling before camping for the night by a statue we found. In the morning Leto informs us that on his watch there was a blue flash in the sky over towards the mountains. We decide to leave the statue and investigate the blue flash.
As we travelled and close to where Leto thought he saw the blue flash the dwarves spot white stone in the sand. These turned out to be the bottom half of ancient stone pillars, located every 20-30 meters. We located a roadway underneath the sand. We surmised that the statue was at the start of the roadway. Baern was able to locate a wall with some steps leading up and it appeared we were standing on the ruins of a massive temple.
Vigharthur spotted something blue moving and it appeared to be some sort of small dragon. We nominate Norixius to speak with it as he knows some draconic. The dragon doesn't respond to any speech nor even when we throw some jerky over to where we last saw it. However, we overhear some familiar sounding noises and discover the kobolds we met a few nights ago are living in a hole. We manage to speak to the kobold elder who says the dragon is living with them but is too young to speak. It appears the kobolds came a long way from the north with an egg which hatched into this dragon. We believe the tunnel leads to the kobold and dragon lair under the temple. There is a lot of stone that could be salvaged in this area.
At this point, with our rations running low we returned to the city, informing the city guard of the hunting rounds, orc tribe, outpost possibility at the ruins with the crypt, mentioning the creatures we met there which we believe are called Stroguy. We did not mention the temple nor the dragon. For our troubles we were paid 7 portions of food.
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