The Journal of Jennara Raventhorn, Volume 3
DISCLAIMER: I should remind y'all that Jen has the tendency of being a little sarcastic, so when you see something about your character... Just remember it's not personal.
The First Evening
Well, it's time to start another volume in my journal, just like I seem to be starting another chapter in my life. When I concluded the last volume, as you may remember, I was traveling through a swamp with a few friends. The gods only know what possessed me to go on such a trip! Let me state now, for the record, that I utterly detest swamps. They're ugly, smelly, wet, sticky, hot, nasty places with huge clouds of bloodsucking insects and lots of ugly lizards of various kinds. But I somehow got talked into going on this trip, and I have to admit that it IS different. It's even more different now.
Perhaps I should explain, in case I ever come back to read this, having forgotten these events (as if I could ever do that!). We were poling our raft merrily (well, sort of merrily, anyways) down the river when a nasty cold wet fog sprang up out of nowhere. We couldn't even see a foot in front of us, and it was really eerie. Fog just doesn't do that! But this one did. When it cleared, we found the swamp subtly changed; it was darker, the trees were uglier (and I hadn't thought that possible!), the water was muckier (see comment about trees), and so on. We also noticed that we couldn't see much, since the sky had rapidly filled with the biggest blackest clouds I've ever seen: obviously, one hells of a storm was coming. Deciding that the time for seeking shelter for the night was upon us, we looked around for a warm, dry spot (or at least a warmer, dryer spot). Hope was all but gone, and we were prepared to settle down for a long, cold, wet, miserable night when Leighla, bless her pointy ears, saw a light off in the distance.
Hoping that we weren't following some legendary swamp creature, we moved as rapidly as possible towards the light. Thank the gods above, it proved to be a fire. This was indeed a good thing, since the fog had recently left me shivering with cold and damp, and the fire was a most welcome sight. Of course, around the fire, there were people. Also a few animals, but those aren't as important. Two humans and a half-elf; one woman, two men (lucky her ? Mitsy was SO jealous!). Only one of the men (the human ? the other was the half-elf) carried any obvious weapons, and I suppose having a quartet of armed strangers approaching him at night gave him cause to be worried, but he was pretty unfriendly. Accused us of being thieves, of all things! As if highwaymen would venture into a swamp! What would they do, steal the mosquitoes? Oh well; humans as a rule aren't very bright, and this one was no exception.
After explaining that we were but weary travelers, hoping to share a fire and some shelter from the storm, the others accepted us, and the axe was reluctantly put away. Perhaps we would have exchanged more words (how DARE he call me a thief?), but before things could go anywhere, a few of the others heard something (I didn't hear a thing; I'm convinced they were jumping at shadows). We spread out, looking around the fire, and wouldn't you know it: they'd been scared of a bird. Such brave explorers these people are! Eventually, they decided to call it a night, and I joined Leighla on watch, where I'm writing this. But my shift is almost over, so I should stop now and get some much needed and much deserved rest.
The Second Evening
This trip sucks! If I ever figure out which one of these idiots talked me into going with them, I swear I'll do some pretty nasty things to them which wouldn't make for pleasant reading and which consequently doesn't belong in this journal. Perhaps I should start, though, by introducing my various companions, including the ones I came in with, in case you haven't read my last journal.
To start with, then, I'm of course Jennara Raventhorn, bard extraordinaire. I'm sure you'll come to know me better as this journal progresses, so I won't bother to say much about myself at the moment except that I hate swamps. But then, you probably already know that by now. I'm an elven girl of a bit past 100 years of age, raised by my aunt Leandra and her wandering tribe of gypsies. I'm afraid I turned dear auntie's hair quite grey with some of the things that I did, but I never caused any harm, and any way, that's in the past now, so we'll just skip it, shall we?
The most... interesting... of my companions from Cormyr is Mitsy. Mitsy is a short human woman in her early thirties, and I'm not sure that she hasn't taken one too many blows to the head. She's a mage, but while intelligent, I swear the poor girl wasn't born with the sense that the gods gave a rock. She seems to love screaming, second only to primping and chasing men. Mitsy is undeniably pretty, with red hair and brown eyes, but so far, all that chasing hasn't gotten her very far (probably because she's kind of irritating sometimes). She also doesn't seem to like me very much; perhaps she thinks of me as competition? I worry about her sometimes, but until she stops being so hostile, there's not much I can do.
Then there's Leighla, a total opposite to Mitsy in many respects. To be honest, I greatly prefer her company to that of the resident flirt. Leighla is a half-elven priestess of Solonor; when she's not trying to convert me, she's good company. Sensible and wise, as you would expect from a priestess, she's perhaps a little too serious for my taste, just like Mitsy is a lot too frivolous. She's also an incredible archer. I've asked her to teach me a couple of times, but she just mumbles some religious crap about how it's a gift of Solonor and I must dedicate myself to him in order to learn it. Can you imagine ME, dedicating myself to the gods? Pfah! But her skills come in handy, and she's nice enough, so I'm glad she's on this trip with me.
The last of us from Cormyr is Prihelm. A big man, he's a paladin of Torm. His babble about "serving the gods" and "doing our duty" and so forth is almost as annoying as Leighla's sometimes, but I like him. He's kind of an innocent; I think he, like Mitsy, must have add one too many head injuries as a little one, but perhaps that's just an effect of being human that I hadn't noticed before I started this trip. He must have led a very sheltered early life, though: he thought dwarves were only a myth! If only I were so lucky. Greedy little bastards!
Then there's the acquaintances from last night. Elealion is a half-elven druid; he doesn't say much, and unlike the other two religious people in the group, he's not quite as obnoxious about trying to convert us. In fact, I venture to say that I could even stand to be around him for an entire day! Of course, I could say the same about Leighla or Prihelm as long as they understood that I have no use for religion, but... He hasn't proven very helpful so far, but he's a nice guy, and I'm sure he'll do something useful sooner or later.
Haley is my favorite person on this trip. She's another short human woman, a little younger than Mitsy, and also a mage (I wonder why we have so many short women on this trip? At my towering 5'4", I'm the second tallest of the four of us!). Unlike Mitsy, she can be serious, she doesn't spend the entire day flirting, and she's got sense to go with her brains. At the same time, she knows how to have fun, and I'm not entirely sure that Leighla does. She's cheerful, helpful, and a lot like me! I think we'll get to be good friends before this is all over.
I wish I could say the same about the last member of our little group. I don't know much anything about him, even now. He's a human, but sometimes I think he's a dwarf in disguise. He won't tell us his name, and he pretty much keeps to himself, but he talks about how he's friends with a dwarf (I didn't think the little furballs had friends!) and he carries around traditional dwarven implements. Surly, taciturn, the only thing he seems to like is his dogs, which are mean little critters that seem to have a real desire to have elf for dinner. But to give him his due, he does try to help us, and maybe he's not such a bad guy that I won't be able to bring him around. On the other hand, he doesn't seem to like music much, so maybe he's hopeless.
Now that I've finally finished that part, I need to tell you all about my day. I hope I never have another day like this as long as I live!
The sun rose (sort of), and of course I got to start my day by being treated to the three religious folks celebrating the new day in their own special ways; perhaps I should just sleep in a little from now on. But eventually we passed that, and decided to join together as we tried to get out of this cursed swamp. This led to an interesting problem: Elealion keeps livestock, and we were forced to share our raft with the two dogs as well as a mule and a pony. I hope he has plans to clean this thing off every day! But we all fit on the raft (barely), and I fortunately found myself up front with Haley and Leighla. Elealion stayed with his animals (I like our furry friends as much as the next elf, but he carries it a bit too far), and Prihelm and our nameless comrade (who shall henceforth be known as Dogboy, or just DB) stayed in back. Of course, I shouldn't have to say where Mitsy was, but in case my reader happens to be exceptionally slow on the uptake, I'll make it clear that the resident flirt was, of course, in back with the men (and probably wishing that the raft had a little more privacy, although it's remotely possible that I'm wronging her...).
We traveled for a while, when all of a sudden the swamp went kind of dead. Next thing I knew, a very large and ugly crocodile came up over the side of the raft and bit me! Have I mentioned that I dislike swamps yet? To make a long story short, Leighla eventually killed the beast after Prihelm proved his ineptness with a glaive and I proved my even greater inability with my sword (hey, YOU try stabbing a giant crocodile in the eyes while it's gnawing contentedly on your thigh! It's not easy!). It was then that I learned one minor drawback to go with Leighla's tremendous archery skills: her god doesn't even grant her the ability to heal her friends! And she wants ME to worship this guy? I don't THINK so! Fortunately, Prihelm showed that he was better as a healer than as a warrior; he covered my wounds with his hands and they went away! This was somewhat embarrassing due to the location of said wounds; Mitsy just looked jealous. I swear I'll never understand that girl!
After all this was taken care of, we proceeded to float through yet more clouds of stinging insects, past huge patches of reeds which made it impossible to see what was near us, and so on. The sky continued to be dark, though it was incredibly hot and humid. The trees continued to block out what little light came through, and the party continued with no small degree of trepidation. It was at this point that Prihelm suddenly fell out of the raft; he was poling us along, the pole caught in something, and the great bloody oaf went overboard. This was, of course, the cause of much concern, since he was wearing heavy armor at the time and proved entirely incapable of staying afloat. Paladins! Naturally, he had to rely on Haley, Mitsy, and me (the three smallest people in the entire group) to pull him back into the raft, although Mitsy was mighty peeved that we were helping her; apparently, she wanted to rescue him by herself (no doubt in order to have his gratitude so that he would be more receptive to her flirting, which the poor man had been trying to ignore all day long; doesn't the twit realize that as a paladin, the boy has vows?). DB went out into the water to try to save Pri, but we managed to pull him aboard before DB could get there. Of course, the fact that the water was only up to DB's chest makes me wonder a little about Prihelm (he could have always just stood up!) but then, as I mentioned, I'm not so sure about him anyway. Meanwhile, Mitsy was mooning over the poor paladin in a most distasteful way ("Oh, Pri baby, are you okay? I was so worried about you, baby!"), and it was all I could do to keep my meals down. Perhaps a hearty clout upside the head would do the woman a bit of good...
We seem to be approaching a good campsite; I think I'd better stop writing. Besides, I may need to save DB from Mitsy's clutches; in trying to dry out, he just removed far more of his wet clothes than is safe around that girl. I'll write again tomorrow.
The Third Evening
Today was only marginally better than yesterday. It's at times like this that I wish I'd listened to what Aunt Leandra told me! Alas, I didn't, and here I am, on what bards like me call "adventure," which makes it sound so much more fun than it really is. I'm wet, dirty, and in thorough need of a bath and a good flask of brandy. Plus, there seems to be any number of things all lining up for a shot to do me a bit of no good; you'll never believe what it was today! My hands are still shaking a little. But you'll have to wait until I get that far.
We left our campsite early this morning; I tried to sleep through the various morning rituals, but they were too loud. Next time, I'll cover my head with my cloak before I go to sleep; maybe that way I can skip that nonsense. Poling our way along the stagnant, nasty, smelly, mucky waters, much of the morning passed uneventfully, as long as one doesn't consider being made an all you can eat buffet for flying insects eventful. We came to an area which was blessedly free of the little nuisances, but unfortunately this was probably due to the giant frogs off in the rushes, who decided that as good of a meal as mosquitoes might be, druids would be even better. I find the irony rather amusing, personally; some animals apparently like Elealion as much as he likes them! But we couldn't let them have him; even if he still hasn't proven to be of great use, he's our friend. Leighla and I shot at the frogs and we were fortunately able to save him, aided greatly by DB's pulling on the rope which Elealion had grabbed. Meanwhile, Mitsy just stood there screaming her fool head off, Prihelm pulped one of the beasts with one swing of his sword, covering himself with frog guts and not doing me much good either., and Haley showed all of us why mages are better advised not to enter melee by exhibiting her great prowess with a staff.. Of course, the poor girl had to wander through the nasty water to do so, but she's still probably cleaner than I am because of it. The last few frogs hopped away rapidly, and that was that. Oh, except that when I gave Prihelm a shove to get him into the water (he really needed a bath, and I wasn't much better off myself), Mitsy screamed some more. That girl is definitely even less suited for this kind of life than I am!
Eventually, we got to a wider stretch of river, almost a lake, and (wouldn't you know it!) Prihelm managed to get the pole stuck again. We tried pulling it loose, but to no avail. Eventually, it was decided that someone would have to go down there and rescue it for us. Haley, bless her soul, failed to take one step backwards (I sure wasn't going to get into that nasty water if I could avoid it!), and went down a few times. All of a sudden, the raft started moving; she'd freed us! Of course, this was when we noticed that Haley had failed to come back to us, something that was made easier to see by the fact that she was struggling to keep her head above water. And then, oh gods! a skeleton popped up! A walking, talking skeleton (well, okay, so it didn't talk, but still...)! And it was trying to drown my friend! I knew I had to stop it, even as my fingers shook so badly I was probably better off not even trying to shoot it; in my state, I was at least as likely to hit Haley as I was to hit the undead. Of course, Elealion promptly went into hiding, cowering under his pony, where he probably got spattered with all kinds of fertilizer, while Mitsy (guess what?) stood there screaming (what a surprise!) and Prihelm the wonder paladin, scourge of evil, just stared in shock, leaving it up to DB, Leighla, and me to rescue our companion. DB jumped into the water and swam after the two, but before he could get there, Leighla's incredible shot knocked the skeleton's head off, killing the foul thing.
Haley was still panicking; she kept swimming away for a while, but she eventually came to her senses and she and DB got back onto the raft with us. And here we've been ever since. I see that we're approaching time to camp, and since I need a bath and I need to clean my clothes and I need to do in privacy, I want to start on my food now and sneak out of camp while the rest are still eating, so I'm done for the night.
