The morning of the 19th of October, Feyd was walking through the streets of Oclar. There was a chill in the air, (everyone else was feeling a bit colder) and a slight flutter of snow, but not a real storm. As he was walking, he looked up towards the sky (as he has a habit of doing on a regular basis) and saw a pigeon flying. He followed its flight, admiring the inbred skill, granted by Ukko to all avian creatures, when he saw a hawk suddenly plunged from the sky, killing the pigeon, and carrying it off for a meal. The vicious blow the Hawk delivered, however knocked loose a small tube that had been tied to the Pigeons leg, and it fell to the ground. Feyd, quickly walked over towards the tube and picked it up. It held a message scrawled in rough handwriting. It was a message to someone named Kern. A slave Caravan on its way back, was caught off guard by the early snow storm. Now they are besieged by a pack of winter wolves, and have taken refuge in a cave. They need assistance or else they will be forced to sacrifice their slaves and the “special package” they have in order to escape.” Feyd of course brought this immediately to the group, who instantly decided to make an effort to free the slaves. Azer was champing at the bit to finally get to kill some Kamal bastards as he put it. We spent the rest of the day making preparations. Gurt agreed to go with us, and informed us that Kern was the head of slave operations in this area. He was headquartered in Oclar, and he is very proficient at his duties, and is also very paranoid. Gurt also had brought along some drinks and some women with him, which annoyed me a little bit, as I didn’t want my shop to be a party haven. I swear if he is not killing thieves he’s partying like there is no tomorrow. He told me to lighten up, but I was too preoccupied with trying to find out more about our mission tomorrow. I paid a visit to Lady Cragthorn’s and asked Arlet if she would like to join us. She agreed, saying that it would be good to get out of town for a little while. She also told me that Kern and Garroway often work together, and that Kern is the lowest form of scum that there is. Both of them have a certain penchant for little children, and that was one of the reasons why Arlet and Garroway had a falling out. We set out early the next morning. Azer and Gurt took the lead, followed by Feyd, and myself then Arlet. We made good progress, when it came time to camp. Most of us had prepared ourselves for crawling in a tent and shivering, when Arlet cast a Leaomand’s Secure shelter spell. Instantly she became the most important person in the party. We slept through the night quit comfortably, and marched off towards Aklar before dawn. We traveled a good portion of the day, when Vaprack spotted a large lump up ahead on the road. We got a little closer when we realized that it was an ice toad, apparently unaware of us. We launched a sever attack upon it, and it was dead in 2 rounds. Arlet was most impressed and clapped, complimenting our handy work. We camped that evening in Aklar, staying at Azer’s home. Azer and I said hello to Chal. We left Aklar early and continued on the way. Once again we were making good time, until we were set upon by a trio of Yeti. They were no match for all of us, and we quickly killed two of them, when the last of them fled. He was too fast for us to catch. We did manage to get a good hide off of one of them, the other being way to badly burned to be of any use to anyone. Just when that encounter was taken care of we spotted a couple of ice trolls watching us. They had seen what we did to the Yeti however and decided that it was time to leave. We continued to press on. We had lost a good deal of daylight killing and skinning the Yeti. We marched hard, and just when we had started to get back to a reasonable amount of progress for the day, we were attacked by 4 winter wolves. This battle was hard at first. Those wolves have a respectable breath weapon, and we were running low on spells for the day, when they hit us. Fortunately after the initial barrage of cold, they were not able to stand up to the cold steel offered from Azer, Vaprack, and Gurt. While, Arlet was setting up her shelter for the night, we set about skinning the wolves for their valuable hides. We marched again the next morning. We had grown more wary, from the previous days events, and more cautious. Arlet had a detect invisibility spell going on, and spotted a yeti Ambush. We knew some were in the area, because Azer had seen some tracks earlier. Apparently the Yeti we scared off yesterday had not warned these new additions to our growing pile of hides. We only managed to get one good one though, the others were either burnt to a crisp from Mauval’s Bolt of flame, or they ran off. We also saw some Hoar Fox, but figured hunting them was not worth the delay. We continued to march during the day, and sleep in Arlet’s Hut in the evening, with encounters with Yeti off and on. They were more annoying than anything, and we had grown very adept at killing them. The night of the 23rd however we could hear wolves howling in the distance, and figured that we would reach the cave described in the note, The next day. We broke camp early, and marched on. Feyd spotted some ravens circling over head. We came out of a clearing and saw a large pack of winter wolves. On the other side of the clearing, and up hill a little bit, was a cave entrance. Scattered around in the clearing were several corpses of humans and gnolls that the Wolves had feasted on. The Wolves were keeping up some kind of Vigil, watching the cave. A quick count showed 10 wolves and about 20 corpses. We could also see a humanoid guarding the cave entrance, and watching the wolves, but we could not make out what kind from here. 10 wolves were too many for us. We needed help killing them before we could kill Kamal, and rescue the slaves. Unfortunately we are not the group they are expecting so they will probably be suspicious, if not wish to betray us. Be that as it may they needed help in order to leave. It was determined that someone had to go talk to them, and I was the only candidate since I had the wand of polymorphing which seemed to be the only way to get over there. I changed myself into a bird and flew to the cave. I did a quick reconnaissance inside and saw many humans chained up, as well as a few gnolls. There were 2 humans chatting, one in chainmail and one in leather. I flew out of the cave and I changed my shape into a half-ogre, and called out greetings. I was immediately told to identify myself, which I did so, claiming I was Chung. The leader soon came out (the human in chain mail) He didn’t believe my story for a minute (I told him I was with a group of hunters.) We could kill some of the wolves but not all of them, I claimed, but if they could attack when we did, together as a group we could finish them off. When he asked us why we would be so generous to do this, I explained that we wanted the wolf hides. He agreed and I left (changed into a bird and flew back again). I couldn’t figure what else to do, but they agreed to charge. I got back to the group and told them that we were to fire some arrows to begin things. None of us Completely trusted the Gnolls to come out, but what choice did they have? They were in a bad shape and they knew it. Feyd prepped Gurt, Vaprack, and Azer with endure cold spells. Feyd had an endure cold on himself plus a resist cold. We fired our arrows, and launched our attack. 8 of the 10 wolves rushed us, 2 others stayed back. 2 each breathed on Feyd, Gurt, Vaprack, and Azer. Were it not for the protection granted to them from Ukko, they would have been in horrible shape, as it is they were only in bad shape. The battle was sounded and the gnolls came rushing out (a little late but they still came) unfortunately they came with spears and threw them into the melee. I changed into a giant wolverine and helped out Feyd in hand to hand combat and actually managed to kill one (with some help). Arlet slowed a couple of them, and cast some defensive spells, but she is not suited for combat we all found out a little late. It is very hard to charm a winter wolf. I avoided casting spells, wanting to save them for any trouble at the end, and helped out by fighting as a wolverine. Azer drank a potion of Super heroism that he had bought from Herb, and soon became the bane of all winter wolves. The Gnolls marched in and were attacked by the remaining 2 winter wolves in the back. 2 were killed instantly. Arlet found herself in trouble and I rushed over to help her, as a wolf had attacked her. Azer also summoned Pitch to join the battle. Soon the wolves were all slain, although we had taken our licks. Then 4 gnolls escorted a 1/2 ogre and a human in chain. I walked up to him in 1/2 ogre shape, claiming that we would take our skins now and be on our way, when he charged me, and called for the attack. I changed into a bird and flew to safety, while the others started killing Gnolls. However everyone was low on hit points, and we were outnumbered Azer screamed “For Teklar!” and started mowing down gnolls but Vaprack and soon Gurt were out of the battle. The Human in the chain was dealing massive amounts of damage, and we had no one that could stand up to him. In desperation I used the wand of polymorphing on him, and managed to turn him into a fish (a stream trout if you want to get technical) He flopped around a bit and died. About this time Arlet let out a piercing scream , as she was backstabbed, and rushed by a couple of gnolls. The Human I saw earlier wearing leather, was holding a bloodied short sword. Feyd ran over to help her and was under attack, while I cooked a couple of Gnolls with Mauval’s Bolt of Flame. It was going from bad to worse however. Azer was taking a beating and wouldn’t last much longer. Just when things looked their grimmest, is when Feyd called upon the might of Ukko, and smashed the gem we had found in the tomb of the Fallen (I had given it back to him some time ago). Smoke swirled around the shattered gem fragments and out of these misty vapors came a large bear creature with horns, and a nasty set of claws. (it was a guardian deamon). Feyd Ordered it to kill the members of Kamal, and the gnolls. Upon witnessing all of this the 1/2 ogre threw down his axe, and surrendered, to Vaprack, saying that he didn’t want to do it, but was ordered to by his boss. Vaprack attacked him anyway, but once again his axe slipped out of his hand into the snow. None of this impressed the Daemon which had its orders, and after ripping the Gnoll, that was attacking Feyd in two, it started after the 1/2 ogre who had tried to run off. He didn’t get very far, and soon all the Gnolls and other members of the house of Kamal were in a full panic. We soon lost visual sight of the Daemon, but every few minutes you could hear another Gnoll scream as the Daemon caught up with it. We bandaged up our wounded, and took stock of the situation. Azer was out, and would be needing rest for a few days. Gurt is functional, but has almost no hitpoints, the same is true for Vaprack. Arlet dispelled the fish, and we searched the body of the human, taking his chain, keys, pouch, and a potion (as well as a sword). Inside we found 18 slaves. 14 men, 3 women, and one little girl. Arlet cast tongues spell, and we told them, that we would take them somewhere safe for the winter, and then we would take them home when it got warmer. One woman is very grateful and hugs everyone allot. Her name was Jewel. A big man with a beard, came to speak with us. He is named Forest. There was a tall skinny guy that came to speak also, who was named Have, a cleric of Forsetti the truth seeker. We also met Thiel another fighter and Kardwell, who was on his way to become an apprentice when he was captured. The little girl is named Kali. We set some of the slaves out to finish skinning the wolves for us, when they were attacked by a trio of winter wolves. one of them didn’t make it back to safety. We there was a brief, vicious battle, before we were able to kill off the wolves, however we did not suffer anymore casualties. I struck up a conversation with Kardwell who also speaks the ancient language. Otherwise we are dependent on Arlet once again. We camped in the cave the night. Vaprack, built himself a snow man, and then butchered it with his axe. Apparently he is getting concerned about his ability to hit a non moving target like those 2 different people who tried to surrender to him. Later he constructed a crude sled that we could hook up to Ed (who is always with us by the way) to carry off the winter wolf hides. The night passed without any other problems. End of Chapter 17
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