Journal of Rollo Lavius 1

Entry #183 - The Sharptooths

(G183 03/01/2014 Fri via Roll20 - JF, AP(GM))

DAY 212 (9 Marpenoth)(October)

In the morning we cleared up our camp (a few empty bottles of wine were lying around!) and set off. It was another clear but cool autumnal day.

I flew ahead to scout the area out and saw the turn in the path marked on our map. Seeing nothing untoward (if you didn't count the big pile of skulls anyway) I returned to the others and joined them on foot.

While walking I kept my eye out for interesting plants and animals. It was the wrong time of year for gathering herbs really but I did see some bull rushes and collected a handful.

Around two o'clock in the afternoon we saw the skull staff and approached it. Jiggles spotted a couple of small lizardmen skulking in the bushes. I gave them as friendly a wave as I could, but when Jiggles passed her rapier to Lavinia they attacked.

The first one fire an arrow at my wife, but it missed, then more jumped out of the bushes and the nearby river including three really big ones, lizardmen about the size of an ogre.

As the fighting started I saw Sylvia cast a Sound Burst spell directly at one of the large ones, but it didn't knock it down. They started throwing nets at us and entangled Shump and Lavinia. That was it, I thought, and summoned up another full compliment of five crocodiles.

As one attacked Shump, Jiggles came up behind it and stabbed it in the back, making it drop. One by one we dealt with them and when it appeared they were trying to take us alive Jiggles knocked out the last of them with her sap.

One big one was dead, four small ones had run away and we were left with two big ones and five small ones which we healed and tied up.

We woke up one of the small ones and tried to communicate with it. It spoke a language none of us could understand but through signs and gestures it lead us to believe that it had thought we were a group of 'dream walkers' and that if we followed it to where one of its leaders was he would be able to talk to us in common.

We untied the others. Before we followed them I looked at the staff of skulls. It appeared that the skulls were of all sorts of animals and humanoids. I saw orc skulls, goblin, troll, hobgoblin, crocodile, dire boar, ogre and many others.

The subdued lizard men lead us to an area of hot springs close to a large gushing geyser. Here they had constructed some rude shelters.

We were introduced to a lizardman called Kessessek who spoke a rough version of common and asked if we wouldn't mind a Zone of Truth spell cast on us. I said ok, although it did seem rather pointless to me since he did most of the talking after that.

He offered us some snail and eel soup which was quite nice.

As I said, he did most of the talking and this is what we learned from him:

- Kessessek was the chieftain of the Sharptooth clan and was currently leading this war party into Shadowscale territory.

- His chaps that had attacked us at the skull staff had though that we were 'dream walkers' and had wanted to free us before we got to the 'hairy-one keep'

- He had seen a lot of 'hairy ones' lately and that they were working with the Shadowscales. Many had walked the path to the keep in a trance. Those that went in never came out.

- The keep was deeper in the swamp and inhabited by Hairy-ones and Shadowscales. There were lots of them, more than K thought he could fight anyway.

- Once the Shadowscale tribe were referred to as the Dragonslayers, but now they were ruled by a dragon and they had 'fallen into darkness'. Their chief was Ketsarra Shadowscale who had the blood of dragons

- Ketsarra could be recognized by her black scales and horns that pointed forward, like her father, Despayr

- Black dragons fly over the swamp. The Dragonslayers had claimed several kills, including one called Tyra. Then Despayr came and the slayers became slaves. His lair was unknown.

- The recent Shadowscale raids on K's lands showed that they had glowing fire in their eyes and shadows wrapped around their scales. They were undead. Those they captured suffered 'a fate worse than death' and became Shadowscales themselves.

- The raiders have killed and capture many Sharptooths. They have only survived by joining with the Poison Dusks (the smaller pygmy lizardmen) and the Blackscales (the ogre sized ones).

- K then asked us to help him and attack the keep. The keep apparently held the his old chieftain and his mate, Ashala. He wants us to free them. In return he would give us magical items.

- K is a cleric of Essylliss.

I questioned him further on these subjects. When I asked how some lizardmen could be so small and others so big he told me some creation myths (see Creation Myth Journal Entries #18 and #19).

Throughout it all Sylvia was grumbling about wanting to go back home and how none of this was really our business.

I looked at the others though and gauged that Lavinia was enjoying this romp and that the lizardmen were probably making her miss Chult. Jiggles was happy as long as there was a prospect of treasure and Shump was happy as long as we were destroying evil, so both were well catered for. Mr B was having a rare old time of course. He loved to bite people and so far Cormyr had been a target rich environment.

That left only Sylvia but I did make it clear to her that she could leave whenever she liked and that we were not forcing her to stay. Her healing powers would be very much missed of course! She grumbled and cursed and called me all sorts of names but never made a move to leave, so I left it at that.

I did wonder why I was letting us be dragged into all of this. It was mostly because I wanted to see the swamp if truth be told. If we had wanted to 'fight evil' well there was plenty of that on the Sword Coast and I never really care about money that much. Now that we had met the lizardmen I was fascinated by them. I'd missed out, living with the bonobo's near Sassarine, when the others had met the lizardmen next to Edith Carlotti's vineyard and again when they had gone into the jungles behind the village port of Tooj-Reh. Finally I was meeting and talking to lizardmen after missing out twice!

So far, the swamp had been a roaring success.

Well I say that, but during our talk a big floating tentacled thing and a bunch of Shadowscale undead lizardmen attacked us. I summoned another full compliment of crocodiles though and we made short work of them. It put Sylvia in a good mood too as she got to use a Searing Light spell on the monster.

After that attack we were given a hut to rest in. It was now about six o'clock. I talked to K for as long as he could stand about lizardmen and the Vasty Swamp, its plants and wildlife. (see further notes)