(G283 26/07/2016 via Roll20 - Mira(GM), JF, AP)(MV1)
[Here I will recount another of the camp fire stories that got told while we all sat around in the 'dragon proof' cave.]
This tale is of four brave adventures. They were a young cleric called Vansee Muffiecats, a halfling rogue named Fanny Bagg, a dragonborn paladin with a name unpronounceable to a human tongue who went by 'Brian' and a wizard called Steven or sometimes 'Inkstains'.
Now, there adventure begins in a place called Merriam Vale. There was a town in the vale, I gather, called Parabor that nestled in a range of mountains beside a lake. In a mansion beside the town lived a venerable elven lady called Elaria Feywing. As well as being a powerful wizard she also took in young people and trained them in ways that unlocked their potential.
Over the years she had taken in many people, but at this time it was just the four mentioned above. Sometimes her methods would appear a little crude, but apparently this was all part of a much larger plan, probably known only to such ancient and wise wizards such as Elaria. She was, after all, eight hundred years old.
So, at breakfast, seemingly apropos of nothing, she requested her four pupils to pop down into the food cellars and deal with a rat problem. This was obviously a test, so they finished their meal and went on down.
She had also apparently 'misplaced' the key to the cellar so Fanny, who was handy at this sort of thing, picked the lock. However the door was trapped and Fanny was poisoned.
(One wonders at what sort of batty old woman traps the larder door when investing in some rat traps would have been more sensible!)
The larder was huge and full of food. The rats were living like kings down here and had truly grown to be of unusual size. There was rat dung everywhere and a barricade erected to hold them off a little by the door.
Fanny, the cynical one of the group muttered, 'What sort of person lets their food stores be ruined to teach us how to fight rats?'
The others didn't listen though, they thought Elaria was wonderful in every way and if they didn't understand her methods then that was simply because they were not yet clever enough.
And so began their first real test and first real fight as a group. Steven started with a bow and killed one with a well placed arrow. Fanny and Vansee were set upon by the critters and knocked to their feet as rats nibbled at them. Brian and Steven defended the women, killing off the rats as they breached the barricade.
Once the last rat was dead, Elaria appeared at the door and congratulated them. The others were happy to have succeeded but Fanny went to her room grumbling and muttering to wash the blood and rat poop off herself.
Later that day Elaria died!
Three days later she was buried, the only people attending the funeral being her four students. A gnome maiden approached them later and asked them to come to her office in town. She was the executor of Elaria's will.
The will left her estate to all four of them as long as they carried out some tasks for her which were given in the form of a riddle written in prose.
They did not find the riddle too demanding and realised that they must collect some items from around the vale in order to open Elaria's treasure chamber.
And so they set off for the first location, the cliffs in the mountains on the edge of the Vale to the west. Here they hoped to find an old friend of Elaria's called Alkieus Skevala.
He lived, against all reason, on a ledge halfway up the cliff in a yurt. On the way up they were beset by flying snakes and once more it was Vansee and Fanny that were the first to be mauled into unconsciousness by the critters.
Luckily though Steven got off a well placed Sleep spell and most of the snakes then plunged to their deaths. He got the last one with a Ray of Frost and saved the day.
Once they arrived at the yurt of Skevala, out on his windy ledge they delivered the sad news of his friends death and exchanged stories of her.
They rested and collected the items they needed and returned to the mansion.
