Ivan’s journal entry for November 2015

=== Sarenith 23, 4712; later in the day===

We fought our way through to the goblin king’s throne room; I guess this is really the goblin chief. I looked down the hallway only to discover that there is no way that I am going to get into that room. These were not big rooms so I am not sure how we would all get into the room and have the space to fight. I stayed back and watched the gate through the doorway. My first real use of the bless spell. I know Koya really believes in the little words of encouragement before casting spells such as these but I couldn’t remember what I wrote down. Instead of taking the time to find the paper with the message I instead just decided that I am no longer going to even try to encourage people; the effect of the spell should be enough.

They allowed Qatana up front and she was the one to break open the doors. I couldn’t really see much but I did see the explosion as the fireworks engulfed a lot of the party. Qatana said that she after that did something called a channel to do a group heal. I think it is like my spell bless; where it bursts out from me. Whereas my spell only affects people that I trust her channel affects everyone within range. She said she has the ability to exclude some number of people. Through this discussion I learned from her that burst spells like bless or her channel are blocked by things like walls. So I have to remember that people around the corner will not get the goodness of the spell.

Those that could fit  inside the room finished off the goblins and the goblin chief. Ears have been removed and we have the head of the goblin chief. Someone found a hidden room and Olmas used his Axe to create a door way. Kali was on and on about the strange language on the box and some of the items. A fan in the chest provides a crude map of Brinestump march with X’s to mark spots. We decided to first go to the one towards the coast near by.

I found my arrows and mended them. I also found and mended Radella’s arrows. We have the goblin ears and the chief’s head. The chief was using a masterwork composite longbow. After discussion I am currently the holder of the longbow. Radella wasn’t sure if she could use a longbow. I really need one that adds my strength to the damage.

The longbow is not as good as the one over at the general store. The composite masterwork at the store had a stronger pull so that it would do more damage. They said that they had recently obtained this longbow for a good price; normally most people just by the standard composite masterwork longbow. The longbow I wanted was 600 gold; 200 gold more than the standard composite masterwork longbow. I originally went to pick up cold iron arrows. Alistair told me that when I go out into the world to get cold iron arrows to help against those pesky red caps. While I was there the clerk showed me these blunt arrows. When I asked why someone would by them she didn’t really have a good answer. She just told me to think about it as being able to punch someone from 100 feet away. I had money and could not resist. She also showed me blanches for weapons. It’s a one use type of thing that for me would cover 10 arrows. I was going to skip these until she explained that I would have to pre-treat with a hot flame to set it. It cost 5 gold to make 10 of my cold iron arrows to also have the silver trait. She explained it as getting through damage reduction of some creatures. Maybe someday I will figure out what to use silver on.

I still remember how much fun it was to create a hot flame to set the weapon blanches on the 10 arrows. It actually didn’t take that long and I kind of wish I bought more. I spent more time playing with the fire then actually applying blanches to the arrows. I will just have to carry around the blunt arrows and the blanched silver arrows until I can figure out when to use them.

Speaking of bows Rarallo has some supper cool bows. The last time I was there He showed me a +1 holy darkwood composite longbow that was ordered. When I asked about cost Rarallo said this cost 18,000 gold. How can anyone afford that much gold? When I asked him what holy does he told me that it does more damage to those that are evil and aligns the weapon good. When I asked how to you know if something is evil he just said “just wait for the Paladin to proclaim that it is evil”. I didn’t really understand. I thought if the bow is expensive then I will maybe buy some arrows. 50 arrows of holy cost as much as the bow; 18 thousand gold. He doesn’t normally stock holy arrows so I would have to buy all 50. Some things like fire arrows sell better so he sells them by arrow for 160 gold per arrow or 8,000 if you want 50. There was something called bane that he sold buy the arrow but only the version for animal. Turns out that some well to do merchants get together for hunts and they each secretly buy these bane animal arrows to get the edge. These bane animal arrows can be purchased for 160 gold each. If I ever get lots of money for magic bows I might need more then one. Oh, Rarallo also showed me this efficient quiver that would hold 60 arrows and store other things like extra bows. We went out back and Rarallo let me try a flame longbow and the efficient quiver. Way cool. This quiver actually lets you pull the arrow you want. For demonstration he had me shoot two arrows one blue and one red. This is really cool. When I mended his arrows with magic Rarallo suggested that maybe I should in the future consider learning to enchant weapons or magic items. Rarallo sells the efficient quiver for 1,800 gold; much more then I have. Coming from the farm I have a hard time figuring out how people can afford these things.

I am also carrying 2 of the 5 bane animal arrows that we found. I wonder if these were created by Rarallo. These plus the longbow are really on loan until we get to town and begin selling things.

Let see. Ok we headed through the marsh over to the “X” near the coastline. At the point where the “X” was we found a ship with some strange writings on them. The goblins were piled up out side and have been there for a couple of weeks. Some of the others did some searching inside the ship but they really didn’t find anything and this ship is dangerous and falling apart. There was some strange writing on the ship and even Kali could not read. Kali really puts a lot of importance in knowing languages. Once again in the goblin fort they kept speaking in some strange language so I had no clue what they were talking about. Supposedly I was supposed to know what the hell they were saying.

Finding nothing of interest we head out of the marsh. We headed over to one of the next “X” spots. We arrive just before sunset and discovered that the boney footprints come and go from a cave. We back tracked and made camp near the lost coast road.

=== Sarenith 24, 4712; ===

Morning arrived and I spent my 15 minutes of focus on energies of my spells to refresh. I looked over to see Kali and Etayne still focused on this task. I have been watching the other spell casters over the last two days to see how they perform this ritual. As far as I can tell Qatana prays similar to Koya. Kali seems to spend her time reading through her book and Etayne does some animal thing with her fox. It all looks so natural when they are doing there thing. What they do looks complicated. It looks like these people have been working on there magic for some time. The other three kept talking about what spells to memorize for the day and I don’t know what this means. When they ask me I just say that I have cure wounds, bless, and magic weapon. They seem to be oh ok so I guess that is the right answer? I have the spells that I can cast continually throughout the day and then those 3 spells. I keep practicing the new spells that I am trying to learn but I just haven’t yet gotten it correct.

The snare trap I set last night didn’t catch anything so rations for today. We broke camp and headed back down the path towards the bottom of the cliff and then over to the cave. On the second spider I moved in behind Ana and shot the spider. In the end Ana took her nice looking Greatsword and carved up the spider. I retrieved my arrow and used mend to fix the arrow. With a light source Qatana pushed her way forward. Sparna and Etayne checked out a path that led to a pool with a strange creature inside. I took a light over so Etayne could see but in the end Sparna pretty much took care of this thing. The others had a name for the creature but I don’t remember what they called it.

A little further down we found the large group of skeletons. I think it was Qatana who said that you need blunt weapons against skeletons. Ha how I found a use for those blunt weapons. So I out 5 in my quiver and held two for the first shot. The fist shots were dead on and took down a skeleton. After that it was the luck of the draw. I really wish I had that efficient quiver.

Qatana said “fall back” so I did. But then the rest of them had no way to fall back so I move forward. Qatana’s health was becoming and issue so I started to move in to help with healing. I indented to cast then step into melee to keep spell casting simple but Olmas backed up bringing the skeletons with him. Olmas was almost dead so I attempted a tricky defensive casting. It’s really hard and I wasn’t really sure if it was going to work. I either need to learn how to get better at casting defensively or stop doing it at all.

Olmas now healed he runs to the other members of the group to help them leaving the skeleton attacking me when I don’t have a melee weapon out. I took damage staying there to help him and he just runs off to find glory. Luckly Sparna stepped over to help out with the skeleton. I am not sure if Olmas running towards what he thought was a bigger battle or afraid of this skeleton. As we had defeated all of the skeletons I got after him about it and he just said that the others needed his help. I am clearly not running into melee to heal Olmas again; it is too dangerous. He has been almost dead twice in the last two days; he is on his own if it happens a third time. These skeletons didn’t have anything of value so I just repaired my arrows and put the blunt arrows back in my backpack.

Moving onto the next room we of course find a skeleton on another chest. He wasn’t moving so I took the time to pull two blunt arrows; At least I will get one good shot off. After several failed throws to get his attention Qatana throws her light rock and hits the skeleton. He stands up points at Olmas and says something that I do not understand. Olmas responds spouting some crap and steps forward. Sparna goes to disarm the skeleton and gets hit really hard before nicely disarming the skeleton. I was able to heal up Sparna after his bold move. This may have saved a lot of damage from this skeleton.

With the skeleton dispatched we found that his sword had some heavy magic on it. It was magic and did something special so it is even more expensive. From my talks with Rarallo it is worth 8000 to 18000 gold if purchased from a store; not sure how much they will buy it for. Even at half price this is a lot of money. We also have a number of other magic items that can bring in money as well. I didn’t pay attention to everything in either chest but I saw Qatana creating inventory and she has normally been straight forward on things.

We have a lot of stuff so we need to go back to town. It would be nice to check out the other ship but we figure that we would need a boat from town to get there. Once I get my one eighth of the loot plus what ever we find out the boat I will hopefully have enough to get away from Sandpoint and see the world.