I<\/span> am not sure what I have gotten myself into here. Besides the obvious, that is, which of course is a swamp. Certainly this\u00a0is\u00a0not how I envisioned that the day would end, even after we made the decision to come here. I don’t know why—maybe it was Qatana’s confidence—but I just assumed we would be done before nightfall. In retrospect that was pretty naive of me.<\/p>\n Am I in over my head? Possibly, but I feel like this is a tipping point in my life. I could spend years\u00a0scribing scrolls in the guild and\u00a0researching and copying dusty tomes in some library in Magnimar, basically growing old and dull. Or, I could be like mom and dad, and take a chance on something more\u00a0than safe.\u00a0And, honestly, how much safer would that “safe” life be? The worst thing that ever happened to me was just a stone’s throw from my friends. There are no guarantees anywhere, not in Magnimar, and certainly not in Sandpoint.<\/p>\n I almost didn’t even come to Sandpoint at all.\u00a0When the letter from Ameiko arrived, suggesting I come back for a few days to visit, I was more than a little apprehensive. For one, our friendship had been fading even before we moved away and I had long since come to terms with it. I didn’t know what it meant that she wanted to see me. And for\u00a0two, this\u00a0town had been hard on me growing up. Most of that was already solidly in the past, too, but it still brings back some unpleasant\u00a0memories and I wasn’t sure I wanted to see some of those faces again, even in passing.<\/p>\n But in the end I said yes, and here we are. I guess curiosity and a glimmer of hope won out.\u00a0I am not exactly sure what I was expecting from\u00a0Ameiko, but if she reached out that meant she wanted to try and reconnect in some fashion, right? Maybe she’d be less\u00a0distant, and maybe time had helped her—deal with? heal from? come to terms with?—whatever it was that happened out there, and that the walls would come down a bit.<\/p>\n They did a little. It wasn’t the same as when we were kids, but maybe that is too much to ask of anyone. It doesn’t matter. It was good to see my friend.<\/p>\n After\u00a0Ameiko took over that inn years ago it became the de facto gathering point for travelers, thrill-seekers, explorers and their ilk, and\u00a0it’s also one of the few places where you can go in Sandpoint if you and your friends want to meet your friends’<\/em> friends, and their<\/em> friends in turn. It was the latter\u00a0that\u00a0had me there for breakfast (though I was visiting Ameiko, I chose not to pressure both of us\u00a0by also staying<\/em> there) and some time in the common room. It had been years since I had seen Anavaru—that running gag about\u00a0her “horse” never seems to get old—and though Qatana and I have been in touch off and on in Magnimar it\u00a0seemed wrong\u00a0to not get together while we were both in town.<\/p>\n Speaking of Qatana, I am actually growing concerned about her. Obviously, what\u00a0happened in\u00a0Kaer Maga all those years ago was deeply scarring and I wasn’t surprised\u00a0to see it affect her as it did. No one should have to adjust to life as an orphan. When I learned\u00a0she was going to Magnimar to study under clerics\u00a0of Pharasma I thought she might finally be healing those old wounds, and after we moved there ourselves I was able to see her from time to time. But\u00a0then she became obsessed with Groetus and the end times, and her life took a radically\u00a0different and dark turn. Certainly, it has given her great strength and resolve, and at the core there is still the Qatana I know—she even started a bakery of sorts in Magnimar, which doubled as a soup kitchen—but it colors her thinking.<\/p>\n At times she does not seem to be connected to what’s around her. She seems uninterested in taking care of her appearance. Her actions can be\u00a0random and occasionally\u00a0they show a lack of understanding of basic social graces. I am almost certain she hears voices and there are moments when I think I see her talking back to them. But mostly I am concerned because I don’t know what this means. Are those voices real spirits or beings? Is this\u00a0a part of her relationship with the deities of old? I suppose all things are\u00a0possible. But where will it lead?<\/p>\n To be fair, she is more…functional than most followers of Groetus, and I use that term “followers” loosely. Groetus does not really have followers so much as he has recluses, fanatics, and lunatics (and sometimes all three at once), and they tend to be doomsayers or obsessed with the dying and the almost-dead. But there are rare exceptions, and Qatana is one of them. “The world is going to end,” she told me once. “It could be today, tomorrow, or next week.” Her life has a sort of immediacy to it.\u00a0Time is not to be wasted.<\/p>\n It was Qatana that first spoke up when she heard about the bounty that had been\u00a0placed on goblins from the Licktoad Tribe (I don’t know for sure how goblins choose their tribe names, but I\u00a0think it is safe to assume that they are not ones for\u00a0metaphor). Of course, we all knew about the\u00a0attacks on travelers and caravans which were mostly\u00a0nuisance affairs, but lately they had taken to scaring horses with, of all things, fireworks that\u00a0had been stolen from somewhere. That was news to me, as was the bounty had been\u00a0placed on them once before and then quickly pulled.\u00a0Apparently, some kids with more courage than sense got killed trying to collect on it, and Sandpoint\u00a0didn’t want more would-be bounty hunters going off to the swamps and not\u00a0returning. But now it was back on again, which means the\u00a0fireworks had upped the\u00a0both the seriousness of the situation and the urgency along with it.<\/p>\n Qatana\u00a0was ready to go right then and there, simply declaring “I need money,” as if that were the only explanation necessary. It’s the sort of awkward thing Qatana does.<\/p>\n She started asking “us” if we’d join her, and so the interview process began. And who, exactly, was “us”? The aforementioned friends of friends. A few people I’d seen around before we’d moved away, a few I’d heard of but didn’t know plus\u00a0some faces that were entirely new. The interview process was mercifully short, with Qatana’s qualifying criteria being one of either “carries\u00a0a large stick” or “casts\u00a0spells”. (She can be refreshingly simple.)<\/p>\n When she asked me, I didn’t answer at first. My hesitation came\u00a0from thinking about the kids that went out there before us and died for their trouble. That was a reminder that you don’t just go kill a few goblins as a means\u00a0of minting coins: they may be the butt of jokes around this part of Varisia, but that does not mean they aren’t vicious and dangerous, especially in numbers. In a way, it sounded both cliche and naive to declare that we could just\u00a0walk out to the swamp and “take care of it”, especially since many of\u00a0us had met one another for the first time not just that morning, but that hour<\/em>. But as I said earlier, I felt like I needed something big to upset my life so that I could find a new course.<\/p>\n Ameiko watched this all with interest and amusement (and possibly more the latter than the former), but she’s not in the habit of seeing people get hurt so she did wander over and offer some practical advice from her own experiences. That advice boiled down to: get to know everyone’s skills\u00a0before<\/em>\u00a0you\u00a0set out and put your lives in each others’ hands. Fair enough, and so we did. Note to Ameiko: the next time you give that speech, specifically add “and what languages you have in common” to the list.<\/em><\/p>\n We set out a couple of hours later for the Brinestump Marsh\u00a0(who comes up with these names?), taking a fishing trail along the river delta to the shore. Ameiko told us of a halfling man who had set up a little home\u00a0out there and established himself as the self-proclaimed “Warden of the Swamp”.\u00a0If we wanted to get some information on the goblins, then perhaps that would be a good place to start.<\/p>\n It’s from his\u00a0home, in fact, where I am writing this currently, and he has been\u00a0gracious enough to offer\u00a0us food and lodging for the night. But I am getting ahead of myself.<\/p>\n When we first arrived at the house we had been following two sets of footprints: one roughly child-sized (or halfling), and one human-sized. They led right to his home, and that is where events took a bizarre—and later, frightening—turn.<\/p>\n Qatana, Anavaru and Ivan approached the door (gods, Ivan is just a kid…what is he doing<\/em> out here?) and, surprisingly, the Warden answered when Anavaru knocked. I couldn’t hear what was said, but I could see him and he did not look good: very ill, very tired and seemingly\u00a0wounded. There was a brief exchange that ended with Ivan pushing his way forward\u00a0to give\u00a0some unsolicited healing. And then it got weird. Very, very weird.<\/p>\n Qatana…she just barged in. Literally. She just pushed her way in the door, without asking to come in, and without being invited. She walked right in his home and started poking around.<\/p>\n Everyone was in shock, especially the poor Warden. Except there was something about him that didn’t seem to fit. He was injured, and grateful for the healing, but he was also evasive and alarmed. Not because of Qatana or us,\u00a0but because of something else. I like to think that this is what\u00a0Qatana sensed and the reason why she did what she did, but I don’t know. Whatever her motivation, though, it set the right events in motion and it made me suspicious\u00a0and\u00a0the Warden increasingly uneasy.<\/p>\n So I cast\u00a0a spell to search for magic, outside where I was\u00a0out of earshot so as not to raise suspicion, and joined them in the Warden’s entry,\u00a0under the pretense of helping to get a handle on Qatana and put the poor man\u00a0at ease. What I was really trying to do was get a look around, myself, and what I saw gave me a bad feeling. There was no magic anywhere in the house except for the Warden himself. Not\u00a0on<\/em> him, but\u00a0him specifically.<\/em><\/p>\n He was going on about being bitten by snakes, and having been poisoned (all of which clearly appeared to be true), and being afraid of snakes, and yet he lived in a house that\u00a0was a habitat for\u00a0snakes<\/em>, and he kept feeder mice and birds. For snakes.<\/em>\u00a0And it did not add up. So we pretended to help by searching the house for more snakes while we kept the Warden under watch and stalled for time.\u00a0I even asked Etayne to come in and look him over since witches know something of poisons and remedies, and thus she could put on a convincing show.<\/p>\n Eventually, I was able to determine that the magic around him was a faint transmutation of some sort, but I could not identify the source. So\u00a0I called up to Qatana, who was searching the upstairs\u00a0(“for snakes”). In Elvish, I said, “Qatana, I need you down here. I am detecting a faint transmutation aura on the\u00a0halfling.”<\/p>\n And I was taken aback when our halfling friend\u00a0replied, also<\/em> in Elvish.\u00a0“I am sure it was just the lingering effect of your friend’s healing spell”.<\/p>\n I felt a chill running through me.\u00a0Any one thing on its own would be perfectly innocent, but all of this together created a picture that was just\u00a0wrong<\/em>.\u00a0I could also feel the Warden’s unease, and it seemed we had started a dangerous\u00a0game, with\u00a0us knowing that something was up, and the Warden knowing that we knew, and we knowing that he knew that we knew, and so on. But neither side was\u00a0ready\u00a0to make the first move.<\/p>\n Then Etayne became\u00a0severely spooked by something she saw, and she stepped out to call Olmas\u00a0in. Under the guise of “you should stay down; you’ve been poisoned” and so on, he ensured that\u00a0the halfling\u00a0was sitting down and staying that way. This worked for a little bit but the Warden’s patience wore thin and\u00a0Olmas had to get obstinate\u00a0about it, and that is when our halfling host\u00a0went from agitated to angry to hostile to violent. He leapt from his chair, ran upstairs with Olmas on his heels,\u00a0and within seconds a lethal fight had broken out in the hallway.<\/p>\n We were not, in fact, talking to a halfling.\u00a0We found the\u00a0real<\/em> Warden of the Swamp, one Walthus Proudstump, in a secret room on the second floor of his home after the fight was over. What we were facing was something called a “stalker”: a being capable of assuming the form of others, and both speaking and understanding any language. There are spells that can accomplish the latter two effects, but\u00a0it would appear that these creatures\u00a0do this continually. According to the real<\/em> Warden, who we healed and tended to, they were created by the Old Ones. (Possibly as spies? I can think of no better purpose for shapeshifters who are instantly\u00a0fluent in any language. But the Old Ones are long gone, so what is their purpose now?)<\/p>\n This one attacked Walthus\u00a0and took his form. It’s not clear why. For the most part, Walthus\u00a0says the snakes help keep them away (which means there may be\u00a0more than one of them) but somehow this one was able to get to him when his guard was down—while we were playing cat and mouse\u00a0with the stalker inside,\u00a0Radella\u00a0was searching the grounds outside and\u00a0she came across signs of a struggle—and Walthus\u00a0was nearly killed. He was able to get back into his house unnoticed and conceal himself in the secret room that the stalker did not know was there, ultimately saving his own life. The stalker, in the mean time, found that the snakes could tell the difference between the real Walthus\u00a0and a copy, and he suffered numerous, venomous bites.<\/p>\n And that is how it came to be that I am spending the night in a small house in the Brinestump Marsh\u00a0along the Soggy River.\u00a0Walthus Proudstump, the halfling man who calls himself\u00a0The Warden of the Swamp, was so grateful for our timely intervention\u00a0that he\u00a0served us dinner and gave us the use of his home for the night. He’s a good man. Perhaps a little eccentric, but a kind and generous man who is happy where he is and surrounded by the marshlands that he loves.<\/p>\n L<\/span>ast night was uneventful. Sparna, Radella, Anavaru and Olmas each took a two-hour shift on a watch. I had trouble sleeping, and spent the couple of hours writing. Nihali was uneasy as well, and I’d see her fidget and stretch her wings nervously. There was nothing\u00a0specific bothering me so I guess I was just anxious about everything.<\/p>\n I don’t know Sparna well though he is\u00a0a frequent visitor to Sandpoint. He has worked as a caravan guard for as long as I have known him, though whether he has done anything more than this I don’t know.\u00a0Being a caravan guard is mostly about appearances\u00a0and deterrence (something Ameiko taught me, and which I put to good use in Magnimar to keep the riff-raff at bay)\u00a0and I suspect this outing is a welcome change for him. Perhaps a chance to actually use what he carries instead of putting on a show.<\/p>\n Radella is one of the new faces, a half-elf woman whose skills tend to\u00a0towards tomb-robbing and thinking on your feet. Note: I am being diplomatic here. I have nothing against her, but I suspect neither mom nor dad would be likely to invite her to dinner.<\/p>\n I’ve always liked Anavaru\u00a0and she was never unkind to me.\u00a0It’s terrible what happened to her and her family. First her mom, and then her dad. Niska practically adopted them, and then Ana lost her, too.<\/p>\n Shalelu seems to know everyone in Varisia and Olmas is another one of her strays, this one a half-elf\u00a0man. He\u00a0seriously\u00a0considered bringing a horse into a marshland. We actually had to talk him out of it. Where does she find these people?<\/p>\n Ivan, as I have said, is just a kid, too young to be properly concerned for his own safety.\u00a0Another new face to me, but apparently close to Koya.<\/p>\n I remember seeing Etayne from time to time when I was younger. She’s\u00a0a half-sister to Shalelu but I don’t know the circumstances (and it is not my business, anyway). She was not\u00a0comfortable in town then, and she seems to be even less so, now. I can understand that. Witchcraft just isn’t trusted, especially in Varisia where superstitions flow like water.<\/p>\n This morning\u00a0we are going back out to the Lost Coast Road so we can come\u00a0in along a different\u00a0path\u00a0that leads to the goblin village. Walthus advised us against a more direct route through the marshlands. Apparently the “monster in the swamp” is real, and not someone’s imagination made\u00a0legend through oral tradition. We saw a footprint yesterday—three toes in an alien\u00a0arrangement—and Walthus said it belongs to it. “It has claws for hands and feet and its legs bend the wrong direction for a man,” he\u00a0explained. “It’s jaws also open wrong<\/em>.”<\/p>\n He said it was a fearsome creature\u00a0that\u00a0first appeared here maybe five years ago. And it\u00a0sounds like something\u00a0best left alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sarenith 22, 4712 (Brinestump Marsh, Night) I am not sure what I have gotten myself into here. Besides the obvious, that is, which of course is a swamp. Certainly this\u00a0is\u00a0not how I envisioned that the day would end, even after we made the decision to come here. I don’t know why—maybe it was Qatana’s confidence—but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-2373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-kali"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2373"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2380,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373\/revisions\/2380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Sarenith 23, 4712 (Brinestump Marsh, Morning)<\/h4>\n