Journal Log: 4-16-05

Mother;

The past few weeks since have been truly amazing. I am glad you allowed me to come to this foreign land. The adventures have been incredible. Although the training here is rather expensive. I am going to have to be inventive about gaining capital for further training. Thankfully, our most recent adventure allowed us to rescue the daughter of an elf merchant. He was so grateful he paid for the entire groups training, but mother don’t be alarmed I guess paying for training is part of “Mans’ World”. I know it seemed very ‘non-elf’ to me too.

I have spent the past few weeks training hard. I now enjoy the rank of Esquire, hopefully soon I will finally gain my title as Knight Errant. Unfortunately, it seems the paladin had to take care of some unfortunate business (the death of his mount) so he wasn’t able to join us this time.

Baron Drevick has been treating me well. His family is unique. I can’t say I have ever met an elf family like his. For the past few days we have been negotiating a ‘trade’ agreement on behalf of the Baron for passage through some dark territory in order to gain some ‘hard to gain goods’. Gregor was negotiating with ‘Sho’ (I can’t tell you his real name, confidentiality clause), with not a whole lot of success. ‘Sho’ wanted something in return and Gregor had the nerve to actually say “What do you want?” Talk about leaving the door wide open. I stepped in and offered a simple exchange of transfers, and ‘Sho’ countered with an eradication of a ‘pest’ problem with some ogre bandits. We all finally agreed.

Not knowing a whole much about ogres (our ogres seem to be different), I went about and gathered some information from some local rangers. I found out that the ogres in these parts seem to come in two varieties, brutish and smart. Some even specialize with weapons! Now that’s dangerous (Note, ogres are already 4 Hit Die monster and now we add the benefit of being a weapon specialist)! I also found out that some are organized by humans; it seems these humans have such a wide diverse range from the purest of good to being even more evil than demons! The rest of the party went off trying to find out and do different things; I wasn’t able to keep up with them they just sort of vanished on their own.

Later, we got together. I did however find out some disturbing news about our brethren here. Take this with a grain of salt I received this information from ‘Sho’, a goblin (note; as goblins go he may be civilized, but he truly is evil, why he is allowed to continue I do not know). He told me about how the Deeping Woods became cursed for all elves. It seems ‘a long time ago’ (in goblin years, he did note that it seems that anything past a couple hundred year is always noted as being ‘a long time ago’) an insane asylum was abandoned by the elves in this region to be consumed by Jublix (a high ranking demon, summoned to this area, these sure are some crazy humans and elves in these parts) and now their tormented souls curse the woods to all elves because supposedly they stood by and did nothing to prevent the destruction. Supposedly, they even killed those who tried to escape.

Finally, we departed ‘Sho’ and head off to destroy some ogres. I kept on thinking to myself that this was not the best plan these mortals had (it seems even the elves here think like humans). For days we traveled, nearer and nearer to the Deeping Woods. It is true the woods are truly cursed to all elves. I could hear the tormented souls calling out. I couldn’t sleep and by the next day I was exhausted. My inner soul consumed through the loss of sleep. The ranger and druid managed to scout ahead and find the ogres. Three were by a fire roasting a huge rabbit/deer cross breed (I told you things are truly fantastic here) and two were guarding a cave.

We came up with a simple plan, attack them with arrows, move in, cover them in bugs, entangle them in a spell, and close in for the kill (this was going to prove a real problem since we were on foot, we had to leave the elf horses behind, because of the weird influence the Depping Woods had on them).Sure enough we let loose with the arrows, they all missed, let loose with the bug spell (managed to cover two of the three in spiders), and we moved in for the kill. The first ogre went down with a combination of the sorcerer’s spell and my sword. The ranger move up to one and is clobbered twice! Yes, this is one of those ogres who specialized with a club and she goes flying backwards on her rear (it really tore up her armor). I moved in on the ogre and hit it twice, hardly a dent. It then let loose and nearly took off my head, lucky I was wearing my helmet. Finally, I managed to kill it. During that time it seems killed the third one and was moving up on the two by the cave entrance.

During the whole exchange the Sorcerer was picking away with spells at the ogre from a far (good idea). The Cleric moved up to help heal the ranger. I just continue, even though I was damaged. Remind me why I do that mom? The druid moved on up to confront the two by the cave. One had gone in to get a single reinforcement (I wonder why there weren’t more inside?) The bard had been shooting arrows at them, poorly, but he was getting better. I moved up and wound one, but the ranger killed it. She moves over, the druid changes into a tree, the bard moves up with his sword (note; the sorcerer is dangerously alone in the woods slinging spells, we need to change this tactic), I wound another one, and the sorcerer kills it. Finally, we are down to the final ogre (one tough bugger, or very lucky), either way we continue to exchange blows, but he just doesn’t go down. Sure we wounded him numerous times, but he didn’t go down. Finally, I did something I will probably regret later I said “Work for us and live or die now?” in common, suddenly he pauses and he replied back in common “Ok, how I know you will not kill me?” I stopped, and took a step backwards, it seemed like an eternity, but the rest of the party did the same.

Typical of this group the bard opens up and says “Drop your weapon!” It was a good idea, but just bad timing. I doubt even a paladin would do such a thing; let alone an evil ogre (I presume he’s evil, it may not be the case). Well, it seems we now have an ogre ‘men-at-arms’ with our group, I can’t believe that actually worked. Amazingly enough, the ogre agrees to work for us for a share of treasure, but he only gains a ¼ share until he proves himself loyal (he is a greedy old ogre, he is going to prove to be very expensive).

Afterwards we cleared the cave of the treasure, it was a large haul. We are going to need it to fund this group here, and we headed back to town. We informed ‘Sho’ that we succeeded and the stupid sorcerer let the beans slip about the ogre though, I think we will pay for that later. Nissa (the half elf, relative to the Baron) who is also a thief’s guild headmaster informs us that ‘Sho’ does indeed know about our deception, but she asks us to help out the Baron and work as ‘dual edge sword’ type of agents. The party agreed (I’m not sure if that was the brightest idea we ever had, although she is at least related to the Baron).

Well, it is getting late I need to get some sleep since that last adventure I seem to have lost a lot of sleep.  Please, give dad my love and my sisters. I want to come home for the holidays, but being a soldier, you can never tell. I hope dad isn’t still mad at me for joining the military instead of the church like my sisters, but you know mother that my heart was calling for a different kind of service.

Love,

E’Ze

-Elinara Zearana