It all started a few days ago. I woke up to find that Haley had left for a short trip home; apparently, there was some sort of family crisis or something like that, so she was going to be away for a while. Fortunately, our loss of one member was countered by Tolec's long anticipated return, and we were just in the process of planning a welcome back party for him (although Prihelm insisted that "no spiritous beverages be served," because as a paladin, he apparently opposes this kind of thing) when Jones (Page's manservant, as you may recall) told us that our host wanted a word with us. So we tromped on down to his study after breakfasting and bathing and whatnot, and he told us he had a bit of a mission for us. A tremendously easy mission, admittedly, since all he wanted us to do was to take a letter to some friend of his named George Weathermay in the town of Mordentshire a few days up the coast. It seems that George and Page go way back (well, at least in human terms), and the boss wanted us to let George know that all was well here in Holdenby and that we brave adventurers would be willing to lend George a hand if he needed anything done up in his neck of the woods.

Personally, I was a bit annoyed by Page's timing; he could have waited one more day so we could have had our party, after all! But this was not to be, so we packed up our bags for the two-day trip (Page has not yet seen fit to loan us horses or anything so convenient, so we were forced to walk, thus making the trip a good bit slower) and set out that very morning.

All things considered, it was a really boring hike. I mean, I did my best to keep spirits up and so forth, but the country-side wasn't particularly attractive and nothing interesting was happening at all! Nothing, that is, until late last night, when we were within an hour or so of our destination...

Night had fallen by that time, but since we were so close, we decided to press on, partially (though no one was willing to admit it) because the speed with which it had gotten dark and the lonely environment (Mordentshire is surrounded by moors and bogs, so there's not a lot outside of town) made us all a bit uneasy. Besides, there were wolves or something like that in the area, since we could hear all sorts of baying at the moon and that kind of thing, and we all felt a bit safer at the thought of being in town. So we marched our way on in to the city and promptly started looking for an inn, ignoring all the strange looks that Sam and I were getting from the natives. I am getting pretty irritated with people in this stupid country; none of them seem to recognize elves at all, or else they all think we're evil creatures that should all be burned at the stake or some such. Humans are very very very odd!

Anyways, we found an inn called the Beached Mermaid not far into town, so we made our way on inside and plopped down before the fire. It was one of those truly tasteless nautical designs that some humans are so fond of, complete with ropes and belaying pins and ship's wheels and all that kind of junk on the walls, although at least they didn't go so far as to have any large stuffed fish on the walls, much to my relief. But although the decor left something to be desired, it was a warm and cheerful place, and we were tired and hungry, so we decided to stay. The innkeeper, Garret Nancy by name, came up to us and did his best pirate imitation, asking what he could do for us and where we came from and so on, and after we told him the whole long story, he sort of smiled approvingly and gave us a table and some food (also rum, although Prihelm embarrassed himself by asking for milk instead) while he settled in to tell us about recent events in his hometown.

These poor people seem to be having problems with dogs of some sort; apparently, the shepherds and other peasants who live outside of town have been disappearing or being killed at a pretty fair clip, and there's always dog prints nearby, suggesting (of course) that the dogs are responsible for the disappearances and deaths. Since we seemed like good adventurous types, Garret suggested that we might be willing to investigate. Of course we agreed, and after he passed a hat around the room, we were given an even hundred gold (along with free room and board while we were in town) to end this doggy menace. I was, admittedly, having a hard time taking this all seriously (I mean, they were only dogs!), but since these people were evidently terrified, we were quite happy to help, especially since Weathermay was out of town at the moment in any event and we couldn't leave town until we delivered the letter.

We woke up this morning and had the bestest meal we've had in a really long time! Garret may not look like much, and his interior decorator should be drawn and quartered, but he sure does know how to make a good breakfast! For a human, that is (his food tends to be a bit heavier and greasier than I would like, but it's a lot better than that blasted porridge that Jones was serving us). We were just in the process of finishing up our meal (except for Prihelm, who was just starting, since he needed to do his morning ritual) when a man came bursting into the room and announced that Shepherd Dawson had been killed by the dogs last night! Obviously, we were needed, so we went out to follow this guy back to the tragic scene and quickly came across a mob.

Fortunately, this mob wasn't out for my blood; instead, they were being led by a man who was introduced to us as Sheriff John Westbrooke, and he had every intention of taking his hundred peasants or so, hunting down the dogs, and slaying them. Personally, I was a bit dubious, but we decided to go along with them, after loaning them a few weapons, and questioned the Sheriff on our way.

He couldn't really tell us very much; this sort of thing had been going on for a while now, and no one knew what to do about it. Apparently, though, there were some abandoned manor houses outside of town that he thought might be haunted and hadn't yet investigated, so that was obviously going to have to be our first place to start. In particular, Wescote Manor wasn't too far from Shepherd Dawson's hut, so while the natives were too afraid to go exploring, I thought that would be a good place to start.

Well, we got to the hut, and sure enough, there was one dead shepherd (along with a couple of dozen dead sheep) and paw prints. Also, strangely enough, there was what seemed to be a wattle and daub type statue of a dog right next to the Dawson's corpse which promptly disentigrated as we closed in to take a better look. At the time, Westbrooke and all the rest of us put it up to weird people with demented senses of humor, but we've since learned otherwise. Of course, if I get off track, this will never make any sense, so hold on while I continue the story.

We looked around the scene of the crime (well, I can't really call it a crime, since it was really more of a dog attack, but you know what I mean), and immediately Sam and I noticed something a little odd; there were Dawson's print, and some hound prints, but strangely, there weren't any signs of the hound leaving the area, only coming. Very bizzare!

Since there really wasn't much to be learned there, it was decided that we would split up; the mob would break up into groups of ten or fifteen people and start searching around, and our party would form yet another little group. We were all going to keep in touch by shouting, since no one had thought to bring a horn or anything like that and it was pretty foggy. I didn't think that this was a very good idea, but the Sheriff insisted, so we went along with it.

I was proven correct, of course, since we hadn't gone too far when screams of terror started coming from various peasants, and before we could find our way to aid them, we realized two things: first, the screams had stopped (and the peasants were most likely all dead), and second, we were lost. This was a rather unfortunate state of affairs, but to make matters worse, we saw the dogs coming ourselves! And wouldn't you know it (I should have figured this out earlier), they were, in fact, not real dogs, but wattle and daub statues! Very strange, and from now on, I'm going to call them Mud Hounds, after that line that Valana fed to us so long back:

Anyway, there were about a dozen of them and we weren't in any sort of defensive position at the time, so it was a pretty fierce battle! To make matters worse, Haley wasn't there to help (being in Richemulot, of course), and Alamon was hiding behind some spell so that he could move from person to person healing the wounded, which was very useful in keeping us alive but not so helpful in beating them off. Fortunately, before things could get out of hand, 'Dar was able to cast a quick spell that severely singed four of them, and those four turned to flee and were brought down by another spell at the same time as I cut down the one that was attacking me. The others, however, weren't so lucky, and Prihelm and Sam in particular were pretty badly wounded. Actually, so was 'Dar, but Al's quick healing kept him alive, and our other bard was able to shoot yet another of the hounds down. Things were looking pretty good for us, especially after I managed to pull off one of those truly amazing elven attack routines that Aerik drilled into me, killing yet another of the beasts with a single deft movement, but then Prihelm was bitten yet again, and the last thing I saw was his purse flying off into the bog before the poor paladin went down! Al rushed over to heal him even as I went to help Tolec (who hadn't been doing much anything so far), but his healing was wasted as 'Dar tried to shoot the mud hound off of the paladin and planted an arrow square in his back! (He's only human, so his poor skill at archery can be forgiven.) Al irritatedly healed the paladin yet again, then had to rush over to heal Sam, who'd just gone down himself.

After far too much of this nonsense, with Prihelm passing out yet again before the battle finally ended, we were able to finish them all off, although except for me (and, of course, Al), we'd all been pretty seriously hurt. So now we're taking some time to let Al and Sam help the wounded, and then we need to go back to town and rest in a friendlier environment before we come back out here to see what we can do. I sure hope we can think of something; although I was able to more than hold my own against the stupid mud hounds, my comrades weren't so lucky, and I'd hate to see what these things could do to the innocent people of Mordentshire!