The Seawell Times: Special Edition!

The city was shocked today by the reappearance of past Mayor Boscorm.
In a public announcement Boscorm explained that he hadn’t been executed at all but instead been imprisoned by the accursed ‘Thieves guild’.
He was recently rescued by a group of adventurers lead by Eolar; a priest of St Cuthbert.
Given the vacant position, the public support of the Church of St Cuthbert’s leader, Cabal En and the original trial evidence being declared ‘suspect’ and therefore inadmissible, Boscorm was immediately reinstated into the post of ‘Mayor of Seawell’.
Before moving back into the Mayoral manor, he promised in his re-inauguration speech, to 'bring order back to his city'.
The people seem genuinely happy to see him back.
For all his charisma though, Mayor Boscorm seemed a little dead behind the eyes.

Be Our Guest you Rotten Barghests

New Banner to celebrate ‘our’ final victory over the monstrous goblin-wolves.
Thank goodness for Bodush’s timely arrival.

An unexpected gathering

Mendez walks through the woods and is deep in thoughts when suddenly the stone giant appears in front of him. He can hear his deep voice "Mendez, let me be the first to ..". Before he can finish Mendez already reaches maximum speed in the opposite direction and thinks he can easily outrun the slow giant. Just when he turns his head back into the running direction, he bumps into the knee of the second giant and falls hard. The giant looks down on him, grabs Mendez by the shirt and sits him onto a tree stump. "I've written a song for ....". Mendez already made it a couple of feet before he realises that he is surrounded by barghests, sorceres, druids and other creatures he can't even identify. He slowly moves backwards back to the stump that is in the middle of the circle formed by the dwellers of the valley. He can hear the giant tuning his harp and starting to sing with a loud but melodic voice "Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Mendez, Happy birthday to you!" The last note is still in the air when the first giant already extends his hand towards Mendez. Shaking it cautiously, Mendez can see a long queue forming behind the giant. This could take hours! He smiles when the thought of the unguarded bridge comes to his mind which his friends can cross easily right now. The smile fades as fast as it came when he spots his friends queuing with the other creatures!! This is going to take hours.....

Mendez Strains Brain for Understanding…Again!

While sitting around the camp, Mendez muses over the problem.
“Normally Eolar and Bodush do our thinking for us. Telfis and I are good for short term strategies, but this seems too much for us. We were just hired to stop the wolves attacking the areas surrounding the village.
From what we know, the occupants of the valley are both arrogant and xenophobic.
Do we want to go in, and if so; why?
I care nothing for these people but they do seem powerful. Perhaps we can somehow drive the wolf monsters back into the valley and then destroy the bridge to prevent their return?
Could these creatures magically cross eighty feet of fast flowing water?”
Mendez hopes for positive responses from his disheartened team.

Fly like the Wind

Placing the letter on the table beside him, the grey haired Esteban pulls himself to his feet.
As he walks slowly to his falcon aviary, he smiles as he thinks of his impetuous son. So like his younger brother Mendoza. Quick with his sword, but not his wits.
Esteban summons one of the birds down from its perch and carries it outside. Whispering a few, almost forgotten arcane words, he releases the beautiful bird into the air.
“Keep him safe Razor.”

Favourite pastime

Uvye was looking down at the group of adventurers. After guarding a bridge for hundreds of years, you start to enjoy every distraction from your daily schedule. And those adventurers were fun! They had been talking to Gyrial before sunrise and now seemed to argue with each other again about what to do.
He noticed movement in the corner of his eye and saw two eagles flying towards his lookout. He stood up and quickly removed the chair to create some clean space. A few moments later the eagles changed into the mistress and the leader of the emerald tower guards. Uvye knelt and bowed his head in front of the woman. "Welcome to my lookout mylady! How can I be of service?"
"Raise, Uvye! We have to talk!I just caught a druid who told me a story about barghests attacking villagers outside the valley. The druid claimed that they are coming from the valley! It seems that there is more going on than we thought!"
"Mylady, I have never seen barghests crossing the bridge in any direction! I would have reported them to you of course!".
"Don't worry Uvye, not even I can easily detect barghests if they don't want to be seen, but we need a plan to find out whether the information is correct! Barghests can choose to be invisible or even jump to the ethereal plane to travel if they are experienced enough. We have to find out what they want outside!"
Tarok the guard rose to speak. "Mylady, we have no reports about barghest attacks in the valley. Why do they not attack the villagers inside the valley?"
"I do not know, yet. Barghests are growing stronger the more they feed on victims. Perhaps they want to get stronger without drawing our attention. I say it is time to keep some barghests from entering the valley. I'm going to stay here and watch the bridge, perhaps we can teach them a lesson! Uvye, I know you are using alarms to detect creatures near the bridge; if you adjust them they might pick up barghests as well! This would at least give us an idea how many there are"

"Your wish is my command, mylady!"
Tarek, who was looking into the valley turned round. "What are we doing about the group of adventurers? What are their intentions?"
Uvye turned to Tarek. "They seem to be harmless! They didn't attempt to enter the valley yet and I will be watching them closely since they woke me last night!"
The woman looked interested "What did they do? The white guard kept them from crossing?"
"No mylady, it seemed they were fighting one of the creatures near the bridge! I could hear fighting and saw a magic storm and lightning bolts. I checked the area after the battle, they don't seem to have killed the creature, though."
"They were fighting one of them? It seems they are not as useless as it appeared at first. I know there is a mediocre druid among them."
"Don't overestimate them mylady, they don't appear to be too brave. It might have been luck this time. I can remove them if they are a nuisance for you!"
"Let's wait and see, Uvye! Barghests first! Let's see if we can adjust your alarms."

Frustrating bridge of invisible giants

A new banner may help us resolve our thoughts ...

So - any ideas?

Chainless wonder

A wretched figure hangs limply from four course ropes binding her twisted wrists and ankles.
It is dark, but a dull red glow illuminates her nakedness.
“Wake up Kryton cow.”
The bound female involuntarily flinches at the sound of the voice.
“It’s time for your punishment.”
Suddenly a buzzing sound grows louder as a horde of insect like creatures envelope the now screaming captive.
They quickly strip flesh from bone, exposing muscle and the ligaments beneath.
After what seems like hours, the swarm is sated and they fall away leaving the ruined, but still living Kryton, a mutilated mess.
She mouths something inaudible as her devilish skin desperately tries to restore itself.
“What did you say?” hisses the voice from above.
The bound devil tries again.
“How long have I been enduring this? Surely my punishment shouldn’t take this many years?”
The voice in the darkness chuckles.
“Why my delightful little plaything, you’ve only been here for four days!”
The Chainless devil’s restored body wracks with her bitter tears before she passes out again.

Let's just call it a draw!

Character-character fights are always brilliant - even virtual ones like these. A chance to test your battle-hardened adventurer against your bragging friend's.

They always have surprising outcomes It seems that the only thing that can really seperate the dueling PC's is the extent of their imagination. It may seem that, with his zombie crocs, flight and invisibility, Bodush has it sewn up, but that would be to do Eolar a huge disservice.

So - let's just call it a draw ...

Route 666

After exchanging the majority of his remaining gold for gems and buying another riding horse, Mendez begins the journey back to Seawell.
After spending nearly a month in Redford, he can understand Garris’ feelings. Redford may be small but Seawell is overcrowded, dirty and has the stench of evil about it.
‘See Hell’ more like it.
Despite this, he travels along the highway and makes good time. He also manages to avoid any problematic encounters with a combination of charm and menace. A smile always has more impact when there’s steel behind it.
It’ll be worth it though, just to see his friends again.

The same old song

Looking at the sun setting behind the western mountain ridge he could hear the familiar melody. "On time as every evening, the old bugger!" Since the white lady had appointed him valley guard, the music could be heard every evening. Uvye could still remember he guard before him who had had a flute which he only played every now and then. Gyrial over there preferred to play every day. The white lady seemed to have a fable for bards!
A few years after he had moved into the mountain lookout on the opposite side, Uvye had been close to killing him for disturbing his quiet evenings! But now, a few hundred years later, he was so used to it that he couldn't imagine seeing the sun setting without music. He looked over to the other fortified lookout. He could just make out the shape of his younger counterpart in front of a flickering fire in the distance.
He leaned back and enjoyed the last few rays of sunlight on his grey skin. The music in his ears, he started to fall asleep. His next shift would start in the morning when the music stopped.

There will be blood

One of the wolves suddenly lifted its head. She turned around and could see Darron coming out of the woods together with the wolves. Too little wolves! Not again! Half way towards them she could see that Darron was wounded. And two of the wolves were missing.
"Darron, what happened?!" She put her hands around the stumbling man to hold him up. "Another attack! They ambushed us three hours from here near the big clearing. I wasn't vigilant enough! I'm sorry mylady! We lost Dorn and Arto. It was sheer luck that we survived this time! Their attacks are getting better every time!" He was breathing hard and only now did she spot the arrow shaft sticking out of his back. As they reached the door, the two maids already came running to help her. "Bring him to my mother! I'll take care of the pack!"

She reached the wolves who were waiting patiently in the yard. After a succinct whistle, they followed her dutifully to the kennel and she followed them inside. Two of the younger ones were badly injured, forcing her to cast some healing. She noticed that the old hunter had already used some spells on them. He could have healed himself, but he seemed to get more sentimental in his dotage. The wolves were his life!
Dorn and Arto dead. They had been promising young wolves.
She looked at Korm who was sitting next to her. The old wolf was almost as tall as her. The two arrows sticking out of his shoulder didn't seem to bother him. She guided him out to his own kennel and walking next to him she noticed another wound at his side. Looked like a sword wound again.
The wolf looked at her gratefully after she had healed the cut and removed the arrows. He was one of the oldest and most experienced. He was generally a calm sentinel, bust since he lost his mate in the first attack, the fire in his eyes never completely vanished.
Looking around him for more wounds she noticed the blood on his front paws for the first time. It was a lot of blood! Pieces of skin in between his claws suggested that he had killed or at least seriously injured one of the attackers. She didn't feel a bit of mercy. At least they also suffered!

The first attack had ended in a quick but ferocious melee fight. 12 wolves had been killed, amongst them three of their most experienced elite sentinels. The attackers had come out of nowhere and had had a wizard with them. From what they gathered after the battle there had been 11 attackers, three of them never left the yard. Korm had killed two of them as they tried to get to her and there was not much left of them afterwards to identify them. The attackers had learned that a frontal attack hadn't been a promising option for victory and started ambushing the packs on their training excursions. They were also refining their strategy after every attack, adapting more and more to the fighting behaviour of the wolves. They had to do something or more wolves would be killed, threatening the whole breeding program.

Closing the door of the kennel, she looked back at Korm. "It seems that you will get your revenge soon. Defense is not an option anymore. We have to find their hideout!" She could see in his eyes that he understood! They had just finished training the new pack of trackers. This would be their final exam!