Geode Fe

There is an interesting aspect to traveling with an enchantress. They seem to be quite impatient, and some mighty strange stuff can occur when they decide they want something now.

Elva blew my horse up, and didn't even ask me first! No no, she didn't call a ball of fire, she made it HUGE! Just like I got to be really huge, she made the horse giant. She had me rig up a harness from the rope I had so it could pull the cart.

Man did it fly! Whoever thought that making a horse's stride twice as long would make it travel twice as fast.

I guess that much meat was more then the local wolves could ignore, as we attracted a following. by the end of the day, only 4 wolves had managed to keep up. Being that they where desperate enough to follow 4 people, Cal felt it prudent to set out our bear traps over night to possibly deter or prevent them from entering camp.

I must say, for a city folk, he makes sense sometimes. He caught 3 of them over night. Quite dramatically too, I might add!

In the morning, I decided to track the 4th one for a ways, to see if we had ran it off for good or not. You would never believe it, but I tracked it right around camp and directly into it! Here, this wolf was so desperate for food, it snuck into camp in the middle of the night, and started rummaging around in our cart.

It looks like it hadn't expected Elva though. She caught it unawares on her way to the cart for bed, and she spelled it to sleep.

I managed to put a rope around it and tied it to the back of the cart short enough that it can't reach our gear and tear it up. I then brought over some food for it. It has obviously gotten over a lot of it's fear of humans, so I am thinking I might be able to tame it enough that we can use it for hunting and night guard.

I hope I didn't leash a monster...

Our journey is taking longer then it ought to. I had expected to arrive in the next town tomorrow or the next day. It appears we are probably only about half way there! It doesn't help that Bailey is out cold. I think Elva was practicing some of her magic, and cast a sleep spell on him. She was probably sick of his inane yammerings about his one true god and so on and so forth. Can't say I blame her, but couldn't she have just told him to shut up? Now we gotta cart his heavy ass around until he snaps out of it!

We encountered a traveler bringing some grain to market on a pack-horse. I couldn't see how that could be profitable until I purchased half of his load! 5 times the normal rate. Talk about highway robbery!

About noon a storm overtook us. We decided to keep traveling in the rain. I am used to the rain, so that didn't bother me. Everybody else seemed to cope with it better than I thought they would. Even Bailey, with a lot of help for me. I set up some of the canvas father had me buy over the cart like a tent so he wouldn't catch cold or rust up in his sleep. We trudged through some NASTY rain until sunset, when the rain lessened enough that we could see more then 5 feet in front of us. We must have missed a turn in the road, as there was a tree right in front of us.

We decide that enough damage had been done, walking however far off the road we where, and set camp under the tree. I curled up under the cart. I woke up to something a little larger then any of us going through the cart. I look out from under the cart to see a bear paw. I reach over and tap Cal awake, and he starts muttering to himself.

I roll out from under the cart and try to start calming the bear, and convincing it that Bailey wasn't very good to eat. Much to tough, more work then it's worth. This was going well until Elva woke up and freaked out. She started screeching and carrying on to get away from the cart. I reach out grab my bow and quiver out of the corner of the cart and back away from the cart. Then she did something even more rash, she attacked the bear by casting a spell on it. I am not sure what turning the bear blue was meant to do, but it did mean I can see it well in the dark. About this time, it finds one of the bear traps we had set and disguised in the cart for bandits which clamps down on it's paw. Elva then does something sensible and summons a dire scorpion.

I start shooting at the bear. I am not sure if it disliked that more then the scorpion, because it turned and ripped it's paw right off! The scorpion vanishes and I feel myself stretch. I look down and I grew twice as big as I was. I take off after the bear, but cant catch it.

Now we are lost, and have an angry three legged bear wandering around nearby. I slept great underneath the cart the rest of the night.

I wish we could say we had an uneventful day. While we didn't get into any trouble ourselves, we did come across a lot of other people's troubles.

A couple of hours into the day's journey, we came across a broken wagon along the road. Beside the wagon where 9 dead bodies. 8 of them looked like they had been decapitated in their sleep. The ninth had been hit by lightening, but not during a storm. Quite a gruesome mess!

We buried the bodies and searched the broken wagon, but it had been picked clean. This could only mean bandits. But to murder 9 people in their sleep? I would think if you let them live, you can rob them again next time they came through.

Farther down the road, we came across a ditch dug across the road in a spot where you can't drive around it. We had to stop to dig the sides shallower and fill it in some so we could get our cart across it. A bit of searching around revealed that this looks like it was an intentional trap designed to slow travelers down and allowing for an ambush.

The best we can figure, the party we had met yesterday where the rouges bringing their booty to market, and they stole it from the dead people we buried along side the road.

They have 2 full days ahead of us, even with the cattle, they would make it into town and be lost to us before we could do anything to bring them to justice. I guess we will just have to let the next town know what kind of trouble there is on the road.

We packed up at dawn and returned to the road for the forest. I wonder what these mushrooms taste like. They have got to be good if we are traveling all this way for just a couple of them.

We make half a day before we notice smoke back towards the direction we came from. It appeared to be from on the farms we had seen from the road. We decide to see if we can offer a hand in putting out the fire, so we hurry to the location of the fire.

We could not believe what we came upon. The farmhouse was on fire. A quick search around the house showed nobody living in the house. There where a few wolf bodies in the building. Bailey went charging in the front door. I had to drag him back outside before he killed himself.

Cal and Elva where attending to Bailey. So I went around to the barn to see if there was anybody around. I just about walked in on 4 wolves eating a sheep in the middle of the barn. I drew and fired on the closest wolf and slammed the door shut. Cal came up to the barn door and opened the door and went in with Bailey right behind him to attack the wolves. I ran around to the back of the barn as I couldn't shoot with them in between me and the wolves.

Cal and I where doing a good job of taking care of the wolves when Bailey caught up with his cross bow and shot at one of the wolves. I saw shot at and not shot because, well, he hit Cal in the calf.

This gave the wolves an upper hand, and if Elva hadn't showed up about the same time a wolf had Bailey by the arm, those two may have been lost. She cast some spell causing the wolves to go into convulsions, and Cal and I managed to finish them off even with his bum leg.

While Cal and Bailey where busy fixing themselves up, I searched the barn and found a little girl up in the hay mound. I handed her down to Elva. The little girl calmed down under Elva's care.

I did a quick search around the perimeter of the property looking for more threats. Upon finding none, and the house fire dieing down, I did a quick search of the house. There where several human bodies and several wolf bodies.

An evening storm was fast approaching so we decided to bunk down in the barn for the night. We weren't in much condition to travel anyway. I brought the horse and cart into the barn for the night.

We had a restful night sleep. In the morning Bailey and I buried the 6 bodies we found in the house. It had been decided to see if the farm we had seen a few miles away knew this family, and would take the little girl in. The trip to the neighboring farm was uneventful. I think the little girl was in complete shock from loosing her family. When we arrived, the neighbors where just finishing up digging a small grave. They had also been attacked by wolves, and lost their youngest boy. They where quite shaken that the other farm had been essentially wiped out save this little girl. They agreed to take her in as she was the same age as the boy they had just lost. We left the few valuables we found for the little girl in their care.

We had an uneventful journey back to the road. Save a single farmers cart, we saw nobody else on the road the rest of the day.